468 EARLY MAN 



In the Pliocene, though the facies of the mammaUan fauna 

 of Europe becomes more modern, and a few modern species 

 occur, the chmate becomes colder, and in consequence the 

 apes disappear, so that the chances of finding fossil men are 

 lessened rather than increased in so far as the temperate 

 regions are concerned. In Italy, however, Capellini has de- 

 scribed a skull, an implement, and a notched bone supposed 

 to have come from Pliocene beds. To this it may be objected 

 that the skull — which I examined in 1883 in the museum at 

 Florence — and the implement are of recent type, and probably 

 mixed with the Pliocene stuff by some slip of the ground. As 

 the writer has elsewhere pointed out,^ similar and apparently 

 fatal objections apply to the skull and implements alleged to 

 have been found in Pliocene gravels in California. Dawkins 

 further informs us that in the Italian Pliocene beds supposed 

 to hold remains of man, of twenty-one mammalia whose bones 

 occur, all are extinct species, except possibly one, a hippo- 

 potamus. This, of course, renders very unlikely in a geological 

 point of view the occurrence of human remains in these beds. 



In the Pleistocene deposits of Europe — and this applies also 

 to America — we for the first time find a predominance of 

 recent species of land animals. Here, therefore, we may look 

 with some hope for remains of man and his works, and here, 

 in the later Pleistocene, or the early Modern, they are actually 

 found. When we speak, however, of Pleistocene man, there 

 arise some questions as to the classification of the deposits, 

 which it seems to the writer Dawkins and other British geolo- 

 gists have not answered in accordance with geological facts, 

 and a misunderstanding as to which may lead to serious error. 

 They have extended the term Pleistocene over that Post-glacial 

 period in which we find remains of man, and thus have spHt 

 the " Anthropic " period into two ; and they proceed to divide 

 the latter part of it into the Pre-historic and Historic periods, 

 1 *' Fossil Men," 1880. 



