THE ADVENT OF MAN. 239 



For the present, therefore, man is geologically a Post- 

 glacial species, and there is nothing unreasonable in suj)pos- 

 ing that he dates no farther back, since several animals his 

 contemporaries are in tin. same case ; and by supposing him to 

 have originated after the Glacial age we avoid the difficulties 

 attendant on his survival of that great revolution. The only 

 necessity for supposing an earlier appearance arises from the 

 requirements of the hypothesis of evolution. Those, however, 

 who hold this theory, may with Haeckel take refuge in that 

 shadowy continent supposed to have extended from Africa to 

 Australia,^ and to have sheltered man in his transition from the 

 ape to humanity, in the Tertiary period. The name Lcmuria is 

 taken from the Lemurs, supposed ancestors of the Apes, which 

 still haunt the margin of the Indian Ocean ; but it may be 

 taken also in its old Latin sense of ghosts of the evil dead ; 

 and as we are not likely to obtain any more tangible evidence 

 of the old natives of Lemuria, perhaps we may hope that some 

 spiritualist may succeed in charming them from the vasty deep 

 for our enlightenment. Should this be so, it is to be hoped 

 that no " drum ecclesiastic " will be beaten to chive them away 

 till they have revealed all they can tell. 



It may be well to aaa that, in addition to ih'; negative evi- 

 dence, there is at least one positive evidence of the recent 

 origin of man which has been well urged by Le Conte. It is 

 this : animals have continued long in geological time in the 

 inverse ratio of their rank. Some Mesozoic protozoa still 

 survive. So do many early Tertiary mollusks. But the mammals 

 are of much less duration. No living species goes back 

 farther than the Pliocene. Few extend farther than the 

 Glacial age. On the same piiiiclple it is not to be expected 

 that man, the highest of all animals, should extend far back in 

 geological time. 



^ The actual reason for belief in the past existence of land in the hasin 

 of the Indian Ocean is found in the close relationship of forms of life 

 found in Madagascar, Southern Asia, and Australia. 



