THE SITE OF PARADISE. 325 



whicli as it is are very much diminished in number, will 

 sooner or later completely succumb in the struggle for 

 existence to the superiority of the Mediterranean races. 

 The American and Australian tribes are even now fast 

 approaching their complete extinction, and the same may 

 be said of the Papuans and Hottentots. 



In now turning to the equally interesting and difficult 

 question of the relative connection, migration, a,nd priniceval 

 home of the twelve species of men, I must premise the 

 remark that, in the present state of our anthropological 

 knowledge, any answer to this question must be regarded 

 only as a provisional hypothesis. This is much the same as 

 with any genealogical hypothesis which we may form of 

 the origin of kindred animal and vegetable species, on the 

 basis of the "Natural System." But the necessary un- 

 certainty of these special hypotheses of descent, in no way 

 shakes the absolute certainty of the general theory of 

 descent. Man, we may feel certain, is descended from 

 Catarrhini, or narrow-nosed apes, whether we agree with 

 the polyphylites, and suppose each human species, in its 

 primaeval home, to have originated out of a special kind of 

 ape ; or whether, agreeing with the monophylites, we suppose 

 that all the human species arose only by differentiation froni 

 a single species of primaeval man (Homo primigenius). 



For many and weighty reasons we hold the monophyletie 

 hypothesis to be the more correct, and we therefore assume 

 a single 'primceval hom,e for mankind, where he developed 

 out of a long since extinct anthropoid species of ape. Of 

 the live now existing continents, neither Australia, nor 

 America, nor Europe can have been this primaeval home, 

 or the so-called " Paradise," the " cradle of the human race." 



