300 AXXUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



possible in accordance with the plan upon which the whole animal 

 kingdom is constructed, and that the only improvement we can look 

 for upon earth, for the future, must consist in the development of 

 man's intellectual and moral faculties. 



There is, however, another side to this question, and the opposing 

 view is well stated in the following quotation from Mr. Page's recent 

 work, " The Past and Present Life of the Globe." 



" It is true that man at present stands the crowning form of vital 

 existence, but the facts of the past give no countenance to the belief 

 that he shall remain the crowning form in future epochs. From its 

 dawn until now the great evolution of life has been ever upward, geo- 

 logically speaking (and be it borne in mind we are treating the ques- 

 tion solely from a geological standpoint) : shall it not continue to be 

 upward still ? We see no symptom of decay either in the physical or 

 vital forces of nature ; and so long as these forces continue to operate, 

 mutation and progress must inevitably follow. Man's own history, 

 physical and moral, has been one of incessant change and progress. 

 The features of different races, their mental qualities, civil systems, 

 and religious beliefs, have all less or more partaken of this mutation ; 

 and the difference that now subsists between the most intellectual, 

 city-dwelling, machine-making Anglo-Saxons and the men of the old 

 flint implements and bone eaves, may be infinitesimally small when 

 compared witli that which may exist between the noblest living na- 

 tions and races yet to be evoked. Unless science has altogether 

 misrepresented the past, and the course of creation as unfolded by 

 geology be no better than a delusion, the future must transcend the 

 present, as the present transcends that which has gone before it. Man 

 present cannot possibly be man future. Noble as he may appear in 

 his highest aspects, it were to limit creative power and arrest its pro- 

 gress to aver that man may not be superseded by another form still 

 nobler and more divine. Physiologically, we cannot suppose that the 

 hornologies of the vertebrate skeleton have been exhausted in the 

 structural adaptations of man ; psychologically, we dare not presume 

 against the correlation of a nobler intellect with a higher organiza- 

 tion. On the contrary, in these ascending forms the divine idea of 

 moral perfection, though inconceivably unattainable by created ex- 

 istences, may be nearly and more nearly approached, and stage by 

 stage the loftiest and holiest aspirations of the present may become 

 the realizations of the future. To speculations such as these, though 

 lying fairly in the way of geological inquiry, science can do little more 

 than merely indicate the line of reasoning ; and if they shall be thought 

 to involve any question as to man's religious beliefs and his hopes of 

 a future life, on this point also science is mute, and defers with humil- 

 ity to the teachings of a higher philosophy." 



CO-EXISTEXCE OF MA^ WITH THE EXTINCT QUADRUPEDS. 



The following is an abstract of a communication recently read 

 before the London Geological Society, by M. E. Lartet, u On the Co- 

 existence of man with certain Extinct Quadrupeds, proved by Fossil 

 Bones, from various Pleistocene Deposits, bearing incisions made by 

 sharp instruments." 



