THE ADVENT OF MAX IN AMERICA. 517 



the area Ibrinerly ooctipicd by the Simian tyi)e was evidently more 

 coiisiderabh' than it is now. It may have been the same witli the an- 

 thropoid apes, bnt down to tlie present time, no fossil is connected with 

 that family. The extinct dryopitheeus, long regarded as belonging to 

 them, lias been shown by the examination of the best i)reserved remains 

 to be nothing more than au inferior ape. The general laws of the geo- 

 gi'aphie distribution of beings, and especially that of increasing restric- 

 tion of area, with sni)eriority of organization, ])ermit ns to aftirm tliat 

 man primarily occupied only a very limited part of the globe, and that 

 if he is now everywhere, it is because he has covered the earth by means 

 of his emigrant tribes. 



I am aware that this idea of the peopling of the globe by migrations 

 has disquieted many persons. It puts directly before us au immense 

 unknown; it raises a world of questions, a large number of which may 

 api)ear inaccessible to our investigations. It has beeu often said, '^Why 

 create all these difticulties? It is more natural to confine ourselves to 

 the i)opnlar movement attested by history, and accept autochthonism, 

 especially among the lower savages. How could the Hottentots and 

 the Fuegieus reach their ])resent country starting from some undeter- 

 mined point posited in the north of Asia ? Such voyages are impossible; 

 these i)eoples were born at the Cape of Good Hope and at Cape Horn." 

 These suggestions may be answered by an anecdote borrowed from 

 Livingston, the bearing of which will be easily comprehended. Tliis 

 iliustrious traveler lelates how in his youth he with his brothers made 

 long excursions devoted to ol)servations in natural history. "In one 

 of these exploring tonis," he says, "before the study of geology had 

 become as common as it did later, we went into a limestone quarry. 

 It is impossible to express with what joy and astonishment I set 

 myself to ])icking out the shells which we found in the Carboniferous 

 rocks. A qnarryman looked at me with that air (►f compassion which 

 a kindly man takes on at tlie sight of a person of feeble mind. I asked 

 him how these shells cajne in these rocks, he answered, 'When (Jod 

 made the rocks, he made the siiells iuid ])nt them there/" Livingston 

 adds, "What ])ains geologists might have spared thems<'lvcs by adoi)t- 

 ing the Ottoman philosophy of that workman." It nniy be asked, in 

 turn, where would geology have been if men of s(uence had adopted 

 that philosophy ? I ask the anthropologists to imitate the geologists: 

 I invite tliem to inquire how and by what way the most distant peoples 

 have radiated Irom the center of the first api>earance of man to the ex- 

 tremities of the globe. I am not afraid to predict brilliant discoveries 

 to those who will set themselves seriously to the study of the numerous 

 and well-established migrations. In this the past ])ermits a glimpse 

 into the future. 



Some years since, when objectors used the language T have just 

 recalled, they did not fail to acbl Polynesia to the list of regions which 

 man, then destitute of all our i)erfected arts, could not have reached. 



