92 DARWINIANA. 



though, pride may. The next suggests a closer asso- 

 ciation of our ancestors of the olden time with " our 

 poor relations " of the quadrumanous family than we 

 like to acknowledge. Fortunately, however — even if 

 we must account for him scientifically — man with his 

 two feet stands upon a foundation of his own. Inter- 

 mediate links between the Bimana and the Quadru- 

 mana are lacking altogether ; so that, put the gene- 

 alogy of the brutes upon what footing you will, the 

 four-handed races will not serve for our forerunners 

 — at least, not until some monkey, live or fossil, is 

 producible with great-toes, instead of thumbs, upon 

 his nether extremities ; or until some lucky geologist 

 turns up the bones of his ancestor and prototype in 

 France or England, who was so busy "napping the 

 chuckie-stanes" and chipping out flint knives and 

 arrow-heads in the time of the drift, very many ages 

 ago — before the British Channel existed, says Lyell * 

 — and until these men of the olden time are shown to 

 have worn their great-toes in the divergent and thumb- 

 like fashion. That would be evidence indeed: but, 

 until some testimony of the sort is produced, we must 

 needs believe in the separate and special creation of 

 man, however it may have been with the lower ani- 

 mals and with plants. 



No doubt, the full development and symmetry of 

 "Darwin's hypothesis strongly suggest the evolution of 



1 Vide " Proceedings of the British Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Science," 1859, and London Athenceum, passim. It appears 

 to be conceded that these " celts " or stone knives are artificial pro- 

 ductions, and apparently of the age of the mammoth, the fossil rhi- 

 noceros, etc. 



