MAN AND NATURE. 261 



humanity) far greater than we derive from any written 

 record of his history. But we can bring no numbers 

 with which to specify this earlier date ; and while facts 

 are every day multiplying upon us, much is yet needed 

 for that thorough confirmation which science requires. 

 The whole enquiry, though it has gained a sort of 

 specialty for the moment, merges in that larger sub- 

 ject which has received the cumbrous name of 

 Palaeontology a part of knowledge, we must add, 

 however it be named, which forms one of the most 

 wonderful exploits of human intelligence as directed to 

 the natural history of the globe. 



Nor can we do much more than vaguely speculate 

 on the state of the earth's surface when Man appeared 

 upon it. Geology is the only school to which we can 

 go for information here. This science, aided by zoology 

 and botany, has made the marvellous disclosures, to 

 which we have just alluded, of those successive stages ' 

 through which, during ages beyond all estimate, the 

 visible crust of our globe has passed before assuming 

 its present state and aspect. We have successive faunas 

 and floras thus opened out to our inspection, numerous 

 almost as those of the actual world detached in parts 

 by time and intervening catastrophes, yet linked to- 

 gether as a whole in the manifest scheme of creation. 

 Whether the changes in them from one period to 

 another belong to separate acts of creative power, or 

 to evolutions and transmutations of species ever going 

 on but hidden from us in certain steps of their progress, 

 is the question which has started into active litigation 

 among the naturalists of our day. We are not con- 



