288 MAN'S PLACE IN THE GEOLOGICAL RECORD. 



bility we may almost say were undoubtedly enjoying a 

 higher civilisation in the sub-tropical and higher tropical 

 regions of Africa and Asia. Were these Asiatic races of 

 the same variety of our species as the Abbeville flint- 

 formers, or did they, though enjoying a higher degree of 

 civilisation, belong to some older but inferior variety 1 ? 

 Much, indeed, in the matter of man's antiquity will de- 

 pend upon how this question is answered by subsequent 

 discovery. If they belong to the same race, and there be 

 no indication of any inferior species of our kind, in ac- 

 cordance with the great law of animal development, then, 

 geologically speaking, man is of comparatively recent ori- 

 gin, and the question is narrowed to one or other of his 

 existing varieties. Our own opinion is that, granting a law 

 of development, the higher animals pass through fewer in- 

 termediate stages than the lower, and that, in man's case, 

 species more closely related to the Quadrumana are scarcely 

 to be expected. But while this may be true, it is equally 

 certain that if there be any truth in geological development 

 at all, the higher varieties must be more recent than the 

 lower; and thus the white variety of man more recent 

 than either the Eed Indian, the Negro, the Malay, or the 

 Mongol. And it is equally certain, according to any law 

 of development, that the older and lower varieties must 

 first pass away a fact in wonderful accordance with the 

 gradual disappearance of the coloured varieties before the 

 spread of the white variety of our kind. Here, then, we 

 have a twofold argument that may avail us in our re- 

 searches viz., the earlier appearance, and, conversely, the 

 earlier disappearance, of the lower varieties of a species ; 

 and applying this to man, the coloured varieties, which are 

 evidently inferior (whatever may be said to the contrary), 

 must have long preceded the white, just as now they are 

 passing away before it. 



