Primitive Man. 49 



the Eocene we find the ancestor of the horse, but having 

 several toes, instead of the solid hoof. We have the pro- 

 genitor of the deer and antelope species, but not presenting 

 the special characteristics of the latter, being devoid of 

 horns or antlers. The nearest approach to what was to be 

 man is discovered in the lemur and lemuroid ape. The 

 strange circumstance of all, however, is the resemblance, 

 in form and structure, between the hoofed quadrupeds and 

 the primates (i.e. the lemur and ape families). In other 

 words,, we do not find in the Eocene any of the existing 

 species or genera, but only fauna of the fossil orders, from 

 which present species and varieties have, by a slow evolu- 

 tion, diiferentiated. 



It is therefore, argues Mr. Boyd Dawkins, with much 

 force, in his "Early Man in Britain," altogether improb- 

 able that man, the most highly complex and specialized of 

 all the primates, with his manifold special characteristics 

 and adaptations of bodily function, to say nothing of his 

 extraordinary and diversified mental processes, should have 

 been contemporaneous with a fauna which had not, as yet, 

 developed a single feature of physical conformation peculiar 

 to the species now existing. To this conclusion add the 

 argument from the non-existence, so far as now known, of 

 human remains or implements, and the question of man's 

 existence in the Eocene must be answered in the negative. 



Coming now to the Miocene, or Middle Tertiary, the dis- 

 cussion turns mainly upon the fact, or otherwise, of the 

 discovery of traces of man's presence. The discovery of 

 carved flints below certain miocene deposits in France was 

 announced at the Prehistoric Congress in Paris in 1867, and 

 again at the Prehistoric Congress in Brussels in 1872. The 

 announcement caused a wide divergence of opinion among 

 anthropologists, which continues to the present time, some 

 denying wholly that these carvings are the work of man, oth- 

 ers being doubtful, some few admitting it. The question evi- 

 dently awaits further exploration. The supposition of one 

 eminent scientist, M. Gaudry, that these incisions could 

 have been made by the great man-like ape of that period, 

 the dryopithecus, is not generally accepted. 



With reference to the Pliocene a like question has 

 been raised as to the age of discoveries of the same and 

 similar character. In 1844 the finding of human bones in 

 a volcanic breccia upon the side of a mountain in Prance, 



