PRIMITIVE MAN. 357 



Perhaps the oldest known human skull is that which , 

 lias been termed the " Engis '* skull^ from the cave 

 of Engis, in Belgium. With reference to this skull, 

 Professor Huxley has candidly admitted that it may 

 have belonged to an individual of one of the existing 

 races of men. I have a cast of it on the same shelf 

 with the skulls of some Algonquin Indians, from 

 the aboriginal Hochelaga, which preceded Montreal; 

 and any one acquainted with cranial characters would 

 readily admit that the ancient Belgian may very 

 well have been an American Indian ; while on the 

 other hand his head is not very dissimilar from that 

 of some modern European races. This Belgian man 

 is believed to have lived before the mammoth and 

 the cave-bear had passed away, yet he does not belong 

 to an extinct species or even variety of man. 



Further, as stated in a previous chapter, Pictet 

 catalogues ninety-eight species of mammals which 

 inhabited Europe in the Post-glacial period. Of these 

 fifty-seven still exist unchanged, and the remainder 

 have disappeared. Not one can be shown to have 

 been modified into a new form, though some of 

 them have been obliged, by changes of temperature 

 and other conditions, to remove into distant and 

 now widely separated regions. Further, it would 

 seem that all the existing European mammals ex- 

 tended back in geological time at least as far 

 as man, so that since the Post-glacial period no new 

 species have been introduced in any way. Here 

 we have a series of facts of the most profound signifi- 



