374 THE STOEY OF THE EARTH AND MAN. 



for existence are most severe. But it is surely 

 absurd to affirm of any species of animal or plant 

 that it must have originated at the limits of its 

 range, where it can scarcely exist at all. On the 

 contrary, common sense as well as science requires 

 us to believe that species must have originated in 

 those central parts of their distribution where they 

 enjoy the most favourable circumstances, and must 

 have extended themselves thence as far as external 

 conditions would permit. One of the most wretched 

 varieties of the human race, and as near as any to 

 the brutes, is that which inhabits Tierra del Fuego, 

 a country which scarcely affords any of the means 

 for the comfortable sustenance of man. Would it 

 not be absolutely impossible that man should have 

 originated in such a country ? Is it not certain, on 

 the contrary, that the Fuegian is merely a degraded 

 variety of the aboriginal American race ? Precisely 

 the same argument applies to the Austral negro and 

 the Hottentot. They are all naturally the most 

 aberrant varieties of man, as being at the extreme 

 range of his possible extension, and placed in con- 

 ditions unfavourable, either because of unsuitable 

 climatal or organic associations. It is true that the 

 regions most favourable to the anthropoid apes, and 

 in which they may be presumed to have originated, 

 are by no means the most favourable to man; but 

 this only makes it the less likely that man could 

 have been derived from such a parentage. 



While, therefore, the geological date of the appear- 



