236 THE KEY. J. MAGENS MELLO, M.A., F.G.S., ETC., 



the physical features of the land. Some of these, it is true, 

 may, here and there, give some slight indications, but we 

 dare not rely upon them ; nature is not uniform enough 

 in her operations, and there are many things which give us 

 reason to suppose that during part of the period in question, 

 there were forces at work, amongst others, a highly increased 

 rainfall, which may have brought about changes far more 

 rapidly than those which we now see taking place in tlie 

 ordinary course of things around us. AVe cannot then ven- 

 ture to say how many thousands of years have elapsed since 

 man first appeared on earth, nor even wlien he first set foot 

 upon our own shores ; but some of the above considerations 

 may make us hesitate before adopting the extreme views 

 held by some writers upon the antiquity of man. 



That man did not originate in A¥estern Europe is a fact to 

 which we must not close our eyes, and however far back in 

 time we may have to place his coming into Europe, we must 

 remember that at a still earlier period he must have inhabited 

 regions which were in all probability further to the East. 

 Ethnology and philology seem to point most convincingly to 

 this, and whatever may have been the halting-places of the 

 various races which entered Europe, or whatever route 

 individual families, Turanian, Aryan, and others may have 

 taken, there do appear to be certain converging lines from 

 each outlying group of mankind, tending to an Asiatic 

 centre, Avhence, in successive waves and at different periods, 

 the leading families of man were dispersed. 



But how far back in time are we to go ? AVas inan an in- 

 habitant of the earth in the Tertiary period ? 



Tertiary Man? 



It has been seriously maintained by certain geologists 

 that traces of man's presence have been found, not only in 

 Europe, but also in America, in Pliocene strata ; whilst some 

 have even ventured to think that they had obtained evidence 

 of his appearance in IMiocene times. But the so-called 

 evidence of the existence of any intelligent being during 

 even the Phocene age, appears to me to be of a very 

 questionable character. A priori it is surely highly 

 improbable that man, who is admittedly the crovt^n of the 

 animal kingdom, should have been in existence at a time 

 when not only not one of the existing species of mammalia 

 was known, but when even most of the genera were 



