310 THE DOCTRINE OF DESCENT. 



fore a Mediterranean race already existed 12,000 years 

 ago. But what space of time was requisite to enable 

 primitive man to separate into races, is entirely beyond 

 computation, and the more so as not the slightest trace 

 of him has hitherto been found. 



With the invariable testimony of Geology that the 

 periods of the terrestrial strata imperceptibly merged 

 into one another, and that, especially from the Ter- 

 tiary, through the Diluvial period, to the present age, 

 continuity has been only locally interrupted, the ques- 

 tion of the "fossil man," formerly looked upon as 

 cardinal, has assumed another aspect. In Europe, man 

 lived with the mammoth and the rhinoceros with a 

 bony nasal partition (Elephas primogenius, Rhinocerus 

 tichorhinus). It has been asserted that European man 

 existed as early as the upper Tertiary age, but the evi- 

 dence is disputable. Such remains as we have of this 

 oldest man known to us, display a high grade of develop- 

 ment, and certainly belong to the period at which man 

 had already found in language the implement where- 

 with gradually to free himself from the dross of his 

 lowly origin. Whether the primitive man be found or 

 not, his origin is certain. 



