THE FIRST TRACES OF MAN IN EUROPE. 683 



excavations conducted by M. Edouard Dupont, under the auspices of 

 the Belgian Government. The dental structure is a striking mean 

 between the ordinary human type and that of the ape. Other Belgian 

 and French caves have yielded similar remains, while on the other 

 hand the remains of an ape (Dryopithecus fontatii), with a dental 

 structure strikingly anthropoid, were found in the upper Miocene beds 

 of the Tertiary at Sansans, department of Gers, in Southern France. 

 In the Trou de la Nanlette long bones of animals in many instances 

 were split longitudinally, for the easy extraction of the marrow. 

 They thus become interesting as early traits of human industry and 

 habits. From the remains as yet found we infer the existence in 

 Europe of a race originally rather ape-like, but progressing toward a 

 build and culture in the complete sense human. 



And this is in perfect consonance with the general progress of 

 organic life during the long marches of the various geological eras. 

 The present is thus the era of the highest types. We are still told by 

 many, however, that although every thing in Nature stone, plant, ani- 

 mal is stamped with tokens of the law and proofs of the fact of 

 gradual development, man, though equally with them a link in the 

 chain of being man, forsooth, must have come from the hand of his 

 Creator immediately, and perfect from the first. 



But let us not draw, from facts as yet comparatively few and very 

 scattered, conclusions which the very first new discovery may reverse. 

 And seeing how few are the human remains yet found in these ancient 

 layers, it is not strange that many hesitate to follow those who already 

 extend the principles of the Darwinian hypothesis to man, and find 

 our very own brethren in the anthropoid apes brethren sprung from a 

 common ancestry, but immeasurably outstripped by us in the long, 

 long course of a development begun in a previous geological era. 

 But those who accept Darwinism as applied to the animal and vegeta- 

 ble kingdoms, implying as that theory does the progress of organic 

 life from low to higher, from simple to more complex forms and func- 

 tions these can hardly resist the conclusion that man also, as to his 

 physical part at least, is but a highly-developed member of the animal 

 kingdom. And, so far as they go, the data of geology favor that view. 



Although the anthropoid apes resemble man in structure more 

 closely than they resemble their lower congeners, still the lowest men 

 are far superior, in mental character at least, to these highest apes. 

 And we insist that it is a legitimate subject of inquiry whether the wide 

 chasm now separating the highest apes from the lowest men has existed 

 from the beginning, or whether the spiritual powers of the latter have 

 been developed from the rude beginnings of intellectuality in the former. 



The indications are that the primeval man of Europe and his 

 nearer descendants were of short stature. The popular notion, that 

 the present generation is physically weaker and smaller than the prim- 

 itive or ancient, is not only utterly unfounded, but there is abundant 



