98 INTRODUCTION. 



rians, offering an indication that the soil at that 

 period was in general swampy, and adapted for their 

 residence, as well as convenient to the greater num- 

 ber of the colossal quadrupeds, to wallow, to feed, 

 and to be fed upon. In the next stage, with a 

 surface risen into upland, the more recent tertiary 

 age, or newer pliocene, another condition of the 

 atmosphere seems to have prevailed. The crocodile 

 saurians have disappeared, or are few, and great 

 carnivora commence to keep in balance the super- 

 abundant productiveness of the remaining pachy- 

 dermata, of huge ruminants, of equine species, &c. 

 The geographical surface of the earth seems, in 

 general, not to have been unlike the present, and 

 each great portion of the globe bears evidence of 

 having sustained a fauna, similar in character, though 

 not identical with the present. During that period, 

 the contents of innumerable caverns attest to a 

 similar activity in the carnivorous scavengers, which 

 we still observe in wild, and, in particular, in tro- 

 pical countries, where hyenas, wolves, and jackals, 

 seldom leave until morning any animal matter they 

 can devour or carry off. Whether the bones of man, 

 in this later fossil state, have or have not been found, 

 is a question in dispute ; but there is an evident 

 accumulation of affirmative facts, which are not 

 satisfactorily explained away by the arguments 

 hitherto advanced for that purpose. 

 We pass now to 



