LIFE OF TERTIARY PERIOD 247 



Boucher de Perthes in the gravels near Amiens. It has 

 been thought necessary to minimise each fresh item of 

 evidence, or in many cases to reject it altogether, on the 

 plea of imperfect observation. Thus the full weight of the 

 ever-accumulating facts has never been adequately recog- 

 nised, because each new writer has been afraid to incur the 

 stigma of credulity, and therefore usually limited himself to 

 such facts as he had himself observed, or could quote from 

 his best-known contemporaries. On the other hand, the old 

 idea that man was the latest product of nature (or of evolu- 

 tion) still makes itself felt in the attempt to escape from any 

 evidence proving man's coexistence with such extinct species 

 as would imply greater antiquity. In the chapter on The 

 Antiquity of Man in North America (in my Natural Selec- 

 tion and Tropical Nature) I have given numerous examples 

 of both these states of mind. And what makes them so 

 specially unreasonable is, that all evolutionists are satisfied 

 that the common ancestor of man and the anthropoid apes 

 must date back to the Miocene, if not to the Eocene period ; 

 so that the real mystery is, not that the works or the 

 remains of ancestral man are found throughout the Pleisto- 

 cene period, but that they are not also found throughout 

 the Pliocene, and also in some Miocene deposits. There is 

 not, as often assumed, one " missing link " to be discovered, 

 but at least a score such links, adequately to fill the gap 

 between man and apes ; and their non-discovery is now one 

 of the strongest proofs of the imperfection of the geological 

 record. 



When we find, as we do, that, with the one exception 

 of Australia, proofs of man's coexistence with all the great 

 extinct Pleistocene Mammalia are sufficiently clear, while 

 that the Australians are equally ancient is proved by their 

 forming so well-marked and unique a race, the fact that 

 man should everywhere have helped to exterminate the 

 various huge quadrupeds, whose flesh would be a highly- 

 valued food, almost becomes a certainty. The following 

 passage from one of our best authorities, Mr. R. Lydekker, 

 F.R.S., puts the whole case in a very clear light, though 

 he does not definitely accept the conclusion which I hold 

 to be now well established. He says : 



