292 MAN'S PLACE IN THE GEOLOGICAL RECORD. 



and similar processes of solution. In this way, and on the 

 fair presumption of the coloured and inferior being the 

 older varieties, the antiquity of man as a species mounts 

 still higher and higher, and the course of discovery may 

 yet compel us nay, will almost to a certainty compel us 

 to assign to him an origin coeval with the very dawn of 

 what we are in the habit of regarding as the Quater- 

 nary epoch, if not, indeed, with the close of the Tertiary 

 period, and just when the more gigantic fauna of that 

 era were passing away from the warmer zones of Asia, 

 Africa, and America. 



