NATURAL SELECTION, ETC. 99 



So long as the existing species of plants and ani- 

 mals were thought to have originated a few thousand 

 years ago, and without predecessors, there was no 

 room for a theory of derivation of one sort from an- 

 other, nor time enough even to account for the estab- 

 lishment of the races which are generally believed to 

 have diverged from a common stock. Not so much 

 that five or six thousand years was a short allowance 

 for this ; but because some of our familiar domesti- 

 cated varieties of grain, of fowls, and of other animals, 

 were pictured and mummitied by the old Egyptians 

 more than half that number of years ago, if not ear- 

 lier. Indeed, perhaps the strongest argument for the 

 original plurality of human species was drawn from 

 the identification of some of the present races of men 

 upon these early historical monuments and records. 



But this very extension of the current chronology, 

 if we may rely upon the archaeologists, removes the 

 difficulty by opening up a longer vista. So does the 

 discovery in Europe of remains and implements of 

 prehistoric races of men, to whom the use of metals 

 was unknown — men of the stone age, as the Scandina- 

 vian archaeologists designate them. And now, " axes 

 and knives of flint, evidently wrought by human skill, 

 are found in beds of the drift at Amiens (also in 

 other places, both in France and England), associated 

 with the bones of extinct species of animals." These 

 implements, indeed, were noticed twenty years ago; 

 at a place in Suffolk they have been exhumed from 

 time to time for more than a century ; but the full 

 confirmation, the recognition of the age of the deposit 

 in which the implements occur, their abundance, and 



