192 Marsh. 



these mysteries to those who are ignorant, or who pay but 

 little heed to what is going on around them. 



But it is not by flint weapons of the Stone age, by bronze 

 weapons of the Bronzo age, or by iron weapons of the Iron 

 age alone that we connect the long, long ago with to-day, 

 nor by a few isolated fossilized bones, which are without 

 doubt, human remains. The weapons and human bones 

 teach a part only of this great lesson, and man's existence at 

 this far-off time is further proved by the finding of large 

 numbers of human skulls in various parts of Europe and 

 America. Almost fifty have been found in Europe alone, 

 and these differ so much that they are supposed to belong 

 to no less than three different races. They are all of Post- 

 Tertiary age, however, and it is remarkable that the most 

 primitive type of skull occurs as an atavism among the 

 peoples of to-day. These, therefore, add their quota to the 

 lessons taught by the human bones and man-made weapons, 

 lessons to which the most sceptical must pay attention. 



The remains of man and of his handiwork have been 

 found under crystalline stalagmite and other deposits, which 

 have been estimated to have taken more than 500,000 years 

 for their formation. Moreover, at a period anterior to that 

 of any existing mammal, so far as we can learn from its 

 geological traces, the earliest evidences of man's existence 

 are found mingled with the remains of animals long since 

 extinct. We can trace Egyptian civilization back seven 

 thousand years by historical data. We can trace the hand 

 of man in Egypt alone far beyond the earliest time to which 

 these historical records carry us. The time that has elapsed 

 since the reindeer and man were common inhabitants of 

 France ; the changes in climate which have since occurred ; 



