CHAP, iv.] PLEIOCENE MAN IN FRANCE AND ITALY. 93 



on the earth. It is to my mind to the last degree impro- 

 bable that man, the most highly specialised of the animal 

 kingdom, should have been present in such a fauna as 

 this, composed of so many extinct species. They belong 

 to one stage of evolution, and man to another and a later 

 stage. 



The same objections may be made to the so-called 

 fossil man of Denise 1 in France, in the Museum of Le 

 Puy, found in volcanic tufa, and who is supposed to 

 have fallen a victim to showers of ashes from a Pleiocene 

 volcano. In this case, as in the rest, we cannot be 

 certain that the deposit has been undisturbed since its 

 first formation, nor is its precise geological horizon well 

 ascertained. 



As the evidence stands at present the geological record 

 is silent as to man's appearance in Europe in the Pleio- 

 cene age. It is very improbable that he will ever be 

 proved to have lived in this quarter of the world at 

 that remote time, since of all the European mammalia 

 then alive only one has survived to our own days. 

 Nevertheless, the arrival of one solitary living species 

 marks the dawn of that order of nature to which man 

 belongs, and in which, in the succeeding Pleistocene 

 age, he formed the central and most imposing figure. 



1 See Lyell, Antiquity of Man, 4th edit., 1873, p. 228. 



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