ADVENT OF MAN. 215 



occurring simultaneously with the object to be supported. 

 But while this holds true, and is fitly applicable to a beef- 

 cooking, bread-eating phase of human progress, it is not 

 strictly applicable to man in all his conditions ; and it is 

 quite conceivable (geologically speaking) that inferior races 

 of men may have existed in much earlier epochs. The 

 flora and fauna of the oolite are extremely similar to those 

 of Australia, where we know that an early aboriginal race 

 have for ages hunted in the bush and camped on its grassy 

 karoos. The inhabitants of the South Sea Islands live ex- 

 clusively on palm-fruits, on farinaceous roots, and the fish 

 of the surrounding ocean : now, palm-fruits and farinaceous 

 roots abound in the lower tertiary and in the oolite, and 

 we see nothing in the fishes of those periods that would 

 render them inedible or unnutritious. The Esquimaux, to 

 whom the very names of tree and wheat are unknown, and 

 who exist on fish, seal-oil, and w r hale-blubber, among the 

 extreme rigours of the north, attain even there a certain 

 amount of civilisation ; and such a lowly race would have 

 found precisely similar conditions in Middle Europe during 

 the glacial era, when icebergs floated in our seas, and 

 whales and seals were stranded in our estuaries. 



We mention these things not from a conviction that 

 man existed during those early epochs, but simply as an 

 argument to show that his first appearance, at whatever 

 period, must have been in accordance with the general plan 

 of vital development, and not in obedience to any phase of 

 external conditions, and that we may fairly expect, in the 

 progress of geological discovery, a much higher antiquity to 

 be proved to the human race than is now usually assigned 

 it. And even now, proofs are not wanting in the lake- 

 deposits, the bone-caves, and peat-mosses of Southern 

 Europe, to connect man with the latest pliocene fauna, and 

 to render it possible that he contested the same cavern 



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