262 MAN AND NATURE. 



cerned with it here otherwise than as regards a fact 

 recognised under any view, viz., that there has been 

 a general progress, as time went on, towards higher 

 organisation and capacities of existence. Taking the 

 animal kingdom as our example, we find the series 

 variously broken, and the inferior and simpler forms 

 of earlier date continuing to coexist with the later 

 and higher. But the tendency in the series is ever up- 

 wards ; bringing its higher members, as regards bodily 

 structure, into close contact with Man, the highest in 

 the scale. His earliest existence is contemporaneous 

 with some animal species now extinct, but which had 

 near affinity to species still present on the earth. Others 

 have become extinct even within the time of human 

 record. Nevertheless, for our argument it may fairly 

 be assumed that the aspect of animal life, coeval with 

 the first appearance of Man, did not greatly differ, in 

 forms at least, from that we now see around us. 



Of the numbers, however, and distribution of these 

 animal forms over the then existing lands and waters 

 of the globe we are less able to speak with assurance. 

 It may be considered probable that the animals since 

 domesticated for human purposes were proportionally 

 less numerous during the infancy of Man than those 

 which are either useless to him, or with which it is his 

 lot to struggle under the ruder conditions of life. But 

 any conjecture beyond this would be bald speculation, 

 unsupported by facts. The remark applies equally to 

 the vegetable covering of the earth at the period in 

 question. The discoveries made in fossil botany have 

 led to its classification into four or five successive floras, 



