IN MODERN SCIENCE. 



151 



land was again very extensive, and palseocosmic man was con- 

 temporary with some great mammals — as the mammoth, now 

 extinct — and the area of land in the northern hemisphere was 

 greater than at present. (This represents the Late Pleistocene of 

 Dawkins.) It was terminated by a great and very general sub- 

 sidence, accompanied by the disappearance of palseocosmic man 

 and some large Mammalia, and which may be identical with tlie 

 historical deluge,* 



{b) Recent, when the continents attained their present levels, 

 existing races of men colonized Europe, and living species of 

 mammals. This includes both the Prehistoric and the Historic 

 Period. 



Mid- 



Dld and 



•n land. 



includ- 



The palaeocosmic men of the above table are 

 the oldest certainly known to us, and it has been 

 truly said of them that they are so closely re- 

 lated to modern races that, on any hypothesis 

 of gradual evolution, we must look for the 

 transition from apes to men not merely in the 

 Eocene Tertiary, but even in the Mesozoic — that 

 is, in formations vastly older than any containing' 

 any remains so far as known either of man or 

 of apes. That these most ancient men were in 

 truth most truly human, and that they presented 

 no transition to lower animals, will appear from 

 the following notices, which I condense from a 

 work of my own in which these subjects are 

 more fully treated : 



* 



* The precise date in years assignable to this event geology cannot 

 determine ; but I have elsewhere shown that the actual antiquity of the 

 palseocosmic or antediluvian man has been greatly exaggerated. 



