iS THE HISTORY OF CREATION. 



ter (vol. i. p. 365). But the post glacial period, or the more 

 recent diluvial period, during which the temperature again 

 increased and the ice retreated towards the poles, was 

 also highly important in regard to the present state of 

 chorological relations. 



The biological characteristic of the quaternary epoch lies 

 essentially in the development and dispersion of the human 

 organism and his culture. Man has acted with a greater 

 transforming, destructive, and modifying influence upon the 

 animal and vegetable population of the earth than any other 

 organism. For this reason, and not because we assign to man 

 a privileged exceptional position in nature in other matters, 

 we may with full justice designate the development of man 

 and his civilization as the beginning of a special and last 

 main division of the organic history of the earth. It is 

 probable indeed that the corporeal development of primaeval 

 man out of man-like apes took place as far back as the earlier 

 pliocene period, perhaps even in the miocene tertiary period. 

 But the actual development of human speech, which we look 

 upon as the most powerful agency in the development of the 

 peculiar characteristics of man and his dominion over other 

 organisms, probably belongs to that period which on 

 geological gi'ounds is distinguished from the preceding 

 pliocene period as the pleistocene or diluvial. In fact the 

 time which has elapsed from the development of human 

 speech down to the present day, though it may comprise 

 many thousands and perhaps hundreds of thousands of years, 

 almost vanishes into nothing as compared with the im- 

 measurable length of the periods which have passed from 

 the beginninof of organic life on the earth down to the 

 origin of the human race. 



