54 THE MAMMALIA. 



grains during the Glacial period, the monkeys and apes of Europe 

 had no chance in the struggle for life, and the rear guard of their 

 retreating army survives only in the carefully-preserved apes of 

 the Rock of Gibraltar. 



Man was probably driven by necessity into becoming a carni- 

 vorous animal. He hunted and killed the horse, the reindeer, the 

 urus, the mammoth, and the seal ; he roasted their flesh and 

 broke their bones for marrow, and finally — to show he was man 

 and not a carnivorous ape — he drew their portraits. These hunt- 

 ing and artistic exploits took place, as is well known, in Post- 

 Pliocene times — the " to-day " of geology, a period well fitted for 

 the appearance of the highest of mammals. But chipped flints, 

 adapted for many purposes and resembling chipped flint imple" 

 ments of low savages at the present day, are to be found in 

 undoubtedly Miocene deposits. Alas ! no bone, no organic trace 

 whatever, of the creature that chipped those flints has ever been 

 found. If we ever find fossil traces of " Miocene Man," should 

 we not find a semi-human creature ? A being the size of whose 

 brain-case would forbid the idea of his (or its) having used articu- 

 late language, which had not learned the use of fire, and whose 

 powerful jaws, required for devouring uncooked food, would have 

 precluded great development of brain. It is difficult to see how 

 man could have become truly man, till the discovery of fire 

 enabled him to eat cooked and softened food. But all this is 

 theory. Much might be done, in fact, if anthropologists would 

 take to heart the lesson that iinprogressive forins are fotmd livifig 

 side by side with the progressive^ as a form closely allied to the most 

 primitive dogs survives in South America. Miocene man is pro- 

 bably dead and gone for ever, but he may have been the ancestor 

 of two or more branches of the order of Primates, and the lower 

 branch — differing little from its ancestor — may still survive. 



I was much struck by the strange story of the Soko, as told by 

 Stanley. He was, whilst in Central Africa, within two days' 

 journey of this great ape, but he did not think it worth while to 

 deviate from his route to find a living specimen. But some heads 

 of the Soko, '''■covered with grey fur,'' were shown him in the 

 native villages. He sent the skulls home to Professor Huxley, 

 and received this (to me astounding) reply : — " The skulls are 



