678 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



have preserved the visible stamp of the relative inferiority of the 

 stock from which they were prematurely detached. We have to be- 

 lieve, in effect, that these three branches Fuegians, Bushmen, and 

 Tasmanians so little elevated in their physical, intellectual, and 

 moral traits, have gone and planted themselves so far away only be- 

 cause the unoccupied space opened out before them. Scouts for the 

 rest of mankind, they have reached, step by step, the extreme limits of 

 the habitable land. They must have occupied for the moment, at least, 

 the parts of the intermediate space, but they could not resist the push 

 of the stronger races, and they could not have survived to our time, 

 except under the condition of restriction to a small area in the most 

 remote tract of their original domain. There is nothing surprising in 

 the fact that MM. Quatrefages and Hamy, having described the most 

 ancient European race of which we have the skulls, that of Canstadt, 

 should have found its analogies only among these same natives of the 

 extreme south the Bushmen and the Australians. 



It will be seen that we are inclined to remove to the circumpolar 

 regions of the north the probable cradle of primitive humanity. From 

 there only could it have radiated as from a center, to spread into sev- 

 eral continents at once, and to give rise to successive emigrations to- 

 ward the south. This theory agrees best with the presumed course of 

 the human races. It remains to be shown that it is equally in accord 

 with the most authentic and most recent geological data, and that, 

 besides man, it is applicable to the plants and animals which accom- 

 panied him, and which have continued to be most closely associated 

 with him in the temperate regions which afterward became the seat of 

 his civilizing power. 



The general laws of geology favor this hypothesis in a remarkable 

 manner. To make it seem probable, we have only to establish two 

 essential points that will not be seriously contested by any geologist. 

 One is, that the polar regions, which were covered with large trees, 

 enjoyed a climate more temperate than that of Central Europe, and 

 were habitable and fertile to the eightieth degree, underwent a slow 

 and progressive cooling down till the middle of the Tertiary period. 

 Thence refrigeration made rapid progress till the ice gained exclusive 

 possession of the country south of them. Under such circumstances, 

 man as well as the animals and plants would have to remove or perish 

 to emigrate step by step, or find himself reduced to a daily more 

 precarious state of existence. 



The second point is the relative stability of the existing continental 

 masses, and of their distribution around a sea occupying the Arctic 

 pole ; while the other pole was occupied with a cap of land surrounded 

 by an immense ocean. The importance of the Arctic pole in respect 

 to the production of animals and plants, and to their migrations, and 

 the nullity of the other hemisphere in relation to this feature, result 

 from such a grouping. The essential point is, that there is nothing 



