88 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Asiatic and African forms, was mild, though somewhat cooler than 

 that of the later Pliocene. It grew colder at the end when the glacial 

 period was ushered in. 



While of course the remains of man, or his flint tools, are to be 

 looked for in the Pliocene beds of Europe, it is still possible that he 

 was an immigrant from southeastern Asia, and shared in the migration 

 of animal life which reached Europe from that region at the beginning 

 of the Quaternary or Pleistocene. 



It is now generally recognized that the 'missing link' or half ape, 

 half man creature (Pithecanthropus erectus) of Java, whose skull 

 (calvarium), femur and three molar teeth were discovered by Dubois 

 in beds shown by him to be of Pliocene age, was the immediate pre- 

 cursor of man. 



In the absence of any traces of man in the Tertiary beds of Europe 

 may he not have, geologically speaking, suddenly appeared in Western 

 Europe in company with Elephas meridionalis ? 



In his 'History of the European Fauna,' Scharff states that the 

 genus Elephas makes its first appearance in the Upper Miocene of 

 India. 



"Our European E. antiquus is, according to Professor Zittel, probably- 

 identical with E. armeniacus of Asia Minor, while E. meridionalis agrees in all 

 essential characters with the Indian E. hysudricus. The Indian and European 

 species of fossil elephants altogether are very closely related, and the supposi- 

 tion that they all have had their original homes in the Oriental region offers, 

 I think, no serious obstacle. The view of the European origin of the mammoth 

 especially is open to very serious objections. It does not occur in any 

 European Pliocene deposits, and could not therefore have originated in our 

 continent until Pleistocene times." 



It may be here stated that the mammoth (Elephas primigenius) is 

 believed to be a descendant of Elephas meridionalis. 



We may, then, provisionally at least, venture to suppose that the 

 human descendants of the Java ape-man shared in this great wave of 

 migration of tropical beasts, birds, insects, shells, etc., which at the 

 end of the Pliocene or beginning of the Quaternary passed by way of 

 Asia Minor and Greece into Europe, and peopled the plains and roamed 

 through the forest lands of western Europe. 



This view is supported by the fact that after the many years of 

 research in the upper tertiary beds of Europe, no indubitable trace of 

 flint tools of human workmanship or any other traces of human occu- 

 pation have yet been discovered, while thousands of them, we speak 

 within bounds, have been taken from the preglacial gravel beds of 

 France and of England, which lie next above the Tertiary strata. 



