76 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



facts and dry details in the study of fossils; but the leading 

 conclusions, particularly those treating of the elaboration of the 

 lines of forms resulting in the modern horse, the ox, the camel, 

 and our other domestic animals, can be made interesting, and in- 

 deed juicy and palatable, to the bright boy or girl of fifteen, or 

 to the college student. 



10. The discovery of a single ammonite enabled the geologist 

 to determine the geological age of the gold-bearing rocks of Cali- 

 fornia. How indispensable fossils are as time-marks, character- 

 izing the different formations, and the immediate practical use 

 of such facts to the mining prospector, always interest a geologi- 

 cal class. 



11. If, as is not improbable, man was evolved from some lemur- 

 like form, and pursued a line of development parallel to, but im- 

 mensely surpassing, that followed by the lines culminating in 

 the monkeys and apes, it is a matter of deep interest to learn the 

 probable time when vertebrate animals in which the fore legs 

 were used for climbing appeared ; when such was the struggle for 

 existence that the ordinary mammalian equipment did not suffice, 

 and the brain was called upon to act more immediately, the limbs 

 and skull being remolded, in a way before unknown, to answer 

 the behests of growing intellectual powers, until man as man ap- 

 peared. Paleontology again must be invoked, and who knows 

 how soon, when we learn more of the later Tertiaries of Africa 

 and Madagascar, light may flash forth and illuminate this dark 

 problem ! 



12. One of the triumphs of modern geology is that it has es- 

 tablished the fact of the high antiquity of man; that it has 

 brought forth out of caves and gravel-beds the man of Neander- 

 thal, the man of Spy, the inhabitants of the caves and shelters of 

 central France and of southern England ; and told us what man- 

 ner of men they were, what weapons they used, the nature of 

 their dwellings, of their clothing, their art instincts, their cuisine, 

 and something of their religious aspirations, as shown in the 

 burial of their dead. It is those antiquarians and geologists who 

 began with the study of zoology and of geology who have 

 founded anthropology, the youngest of the sciences. It is thus 

 due to the geologist that the old science of ethnology has been 

 rehabilitated in fact, rejuvenated. 



It is owing to the combined labors of geologists and anthro- 

 pologists that an entirely different view is now taken of the 

 origin of man. It is almost a matter of scientific truth that primi- 

 tive man was inferior to the lowest of existing savages ; that 

 our present Australian and negro races are physically and intel- 

 lectually, perhaps, on a higher plane than the race of Neander- 

 thal and of Spy ; and that there has been a geological succession 



