THEORY OF THE EARTH. 295 



exceedingly small, which assuredly would not have 

 been the case, if men had then been settled in 

 the countries which these animals inhabited. 



Where, then, was the human race at this pe- 

 riod ? Did the last and most perfect of the 

 works of the Creator nowhere exist ? Did the 

 animals which now accompany him upon the 

 globe, and of which there are no traces among 

 these fossil remains, surround him ? Were the 

 countries in which he lived with them swallowed 

 up, when those which he now inhabits, and whose 

 former population may have been destroyed by a 

 great inundation, were laid dry again ? These 

 are questions which the study of fossil remains 

 does not enable us to solve, and in this discourse 

 we must not apply for information to other 

 sources. 



This much is certain, that we are now at least 

 in the midst of a fourth succession of land ani- 

 mals, that, after the age of reptiles, the age of 

 palaeotheria, the age of mammoths, and that of 

 mastodons and megatheria, has come the age in 



vyland ; and in my Researches, vol. iv. p. 1 93, that of a 

 fragment of a jaw, found in the osseous breccias of Nice. 



M. de Schlotheim collected human bones in fissures at 

 Koestritz, where there are also bones of rhinoceroses ; but 

 he himself expresses his doubts regarding the epoch at 

 which they were deposited. 



