20 THE PORTAL OF EVOLUTION 



or opportunity for, to supply the rungs of proof; content to 

 take the reader upon this occasion from creation to the present 

 time and leave the rest of the journey to be undertaken in a 

 more enlarged edition at some future date when I have given 

 the subject more time and study. I just give the reader 

 a passing glance of the road from creation to heaven, on either 

 side of which is posted the sign-posts of Infinity marked NO 

 THOROUGHFARE to the Mind of Man. 



Before entering upon the treatise, I would like to give an 

 instance of the manner in which the truths of fable, religion 

 and revelation get obscured by time, superstition and bigotry, 

 and which have to be dug out therefrom by means of inverted 

 logic, that is, by arguing from effect to cause, instead of from 

 cause to effect. In the part of England from which I come 

 Devonshire it was, and still is, the custom when I was a boy 

 to go round, I think it was on the sixth day of January in each 

 year, and light bonfires, bang tin cans and such-like perform- 

 ances to drive away the pixies that might otherwise destroy the 

 crop of apples. I cannot say that I ever saw much difference 

 in the yield on this account, but I can enlighten the reader 

 upon the origin of this apparently absurd custom. 



Prior to the dawn of English History the population of Eng- 

 land was Mongolian, or more correctly of Paleolithic origin, 

 possibly the remnant of the great Mongolian emigration that 

 followed the retreat of the Aryan migration of about two 

 hundred thousand years ago, when driven back by the great 

 Glacial Period from Iceland into Russia, Persia, India, Greece, 

 and Italy ; after which it was presumably followed by this great 

 Mongolian wave of emigration which populated all northern 

 Europe and of whom the Esquimaux are still the unadulterated 

 descendants. These formed the prehistoric population of Eng- 

 land and were the brownies of our fairy tales. Into the midst 

 of these quiet and un warlike inhabitants of England, who 

 with their Mongolian development had retained their love of 

 agriculture and horticulture, swept a savage fighting horde of 

 Finns, Picts and Scots, the pixies of our fairy tales, who ruth- 

 lessly robbed our Mongolian ancestors of their vegetables, 

 apples and pears. Hoping to be able to breed up a fighting 

 half-caste race who might be able to oppose these invaders, the 

 Mongolian Englishman of that day stole their male infants 

 and put their own brown ones in their place. Hence, the 



