ea 
lated that the denudation of the Wealden Valley must have 
required more than 150,000,000 of_years. ‘These figures seem 
to us enormous, but to the Geologist, who traces the vast 
changes which our globe has undergone, and who knows how 
slowly some of them must be and are still effected, there 
is nothing extraordinary in their magnitnde. However, as 
Lubbock remarks—*“ Our belief in the antiquity of man rests 
not on isolated calculation, but on the changes which have 
taken place since his appearance: changes in the geography, 
in the fauna, and in the climate of Europe; valleys have deep- 
ened, widened, and partially filled up again ; caves through 
which subterranean rivers flowed are now left dry, &c.” 
Thus the vast desert of Sahara was undoubtedly once sea; 
its cliffs and ancient beaches are still quite visible, and the 
- common cockle is still found living in some of its salt lakes, 
and there can be no doubf that what are called Europe and 
Africa were at this time united. But the question now arises, 
What manner of men were these our early ancestors? Were 
they a fairer, stronger, wiser race than ourselves, or do we 
derive our origin from a type far lower than our own, or even, 
as some would have us believe, by insensible transitions and 
development from the ape? What was Primitive Man like ? 
This is a subject on which there has been much controversy, 
but I think all the weight of evidence tends to prove most 
clearly that pre-historic man was very like, both in physical 
structure and mental development, what the best advanced of 
modern savages are now. Thus if we take the few fossil 
skeletons which have been found under circumstances free 
from all suspicion as to age, we find a skull which is not 
unlike that of many existing races of the present day, while 
the bones of the leg are thicker and the insertions of the 
muscles are more prominent, as might be expected in men 
who led so active and sayage a life. Thus of the Engis 
skull, about whose antiquity there can be no doubt, Huxley 
says “It is a fair average human skull, which might have 
belonged to a philosopher or might have contained the 
thoughtless brains of a savage.” In the case of one other 
most remarkable skull—the Neanderthal skull, it is, however, 
very different, the sloping forehead and enormously thick and 
prominent superciliary ridges certainly give it a very apelike 
