lxii report — 1865. 



such rude weapons and tools are used now, or were used formerly. On the 

 banks of the Ohio, no less than on the English hills, mounds of earth, rude 

 pottery, and stone weapons occur in abundance ; and indicate similar wants, 

 contrivances, customs, ideas, in different races of men living in different 

 periods. Even when in the same country, as in Switzerland, or England, or 

 Denmark, successive deposits of instruments of stone, bronze, or iron ; suc- 

 cessive burials of pines, beeches, and oaks ; successively extinguished races of 

 elephants, elks, and reindeer, give us a real scale of elapsed time, it is one of 

 which the divisions are not yet valued in years or centuries of years. 



Toward a right judgment of the length of this scale of human occupation, 

 two other lines of evidence may be thought worthy of notice ; one founded 

 on the anatomical study of the remains of early men, the other on the laws of 

 language. If the varieties of physical structure in man, and the deviations 

 of language from an original type, be natural effects of time and circumstance, 

 the length of time may be in some degree estimated by the amount of the 

 diversities which are observed to have happened, compared with the varia- 

 tion which is now known to be happening. This process becomes imaginary, 

 unless we assume all mankind to have had one local centre, and one original 

 language. Its results must be erroneous, unless we take fully into account the 

 superior fixity of languages which are represented in writing, and the greater 

 tendency to diversity of every kind which must have prevailed in early times, 

 when geographical impediments were aggravated by dissocial habits of life. It 

 appears, however, certain that some differences of language, organization, 

 and habits have separated men of apparently unlike races during periods 

 longer than those which rest on historical facts*. 



Ever since the days of Aristotle, the analogy existing among all parts of 

 the animal kingdom, and in a general sense we may say among all the forms 

 of life, has become more and more the subject of special study. Related as 

 all living beings are to the element in which they move and breathe, to 

 the mechanical energies of nature which they employ or resist, and to the 

 molecular forces which penetrate and transform them, some general confor- 

 mity of structure, some frequently recurring resemblance of function, must 

 be present, and cannot be overlooked. In the several classes this analogy 

 grows stronger, and in the subdivisions of these classes real family affinity is 

 recognized. In the smallest divisions which have this family relation in the 

 highest degree, there seems to be a line which circumscribes each group, 

 within which variations occur, from food, exercise, climate, and transmitted 

 peculiarities. Often one specific group approaches another, or several others, 

 and a question arises whether, though now distinct, or rather distinguishable, 

 they always have been so from their beginning, or will be always so until 

 their disappearance. 



Whether what we call species are so many original creations or derivations 

 from a few types or one type, is discussed at length in the elegant treatise of 

 Darwin f, himself a naturalist of eminent rank. It had been often discussed 

 before. Nor will any one think lightly of such inquiries, who remembers 

 the essay of Linnaeus, " De Tulluris orbis incremento," or the investigations 

 of Brown, Prichard, Forbes, Agassiz, and Hooker regarding the local origin 

 of different species, genera, and families of plants and animals, both on the 

 land and in the sea. Still less will he be disposed to undervalue its import- 

 ance, when he reflects on the many successive races of living forms more or 

 less resembling our existing quadrupeds, reptiles, fishes, and mollusca, which 



* Max Miiller on the Science of Language. t On the Origin of Species, 1859. 



