94 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



tarsals and carpals; short heel; flat astragalus, and neither hoofs nor claws, but 

 something between the two; the bones of the forearm and leg are not so unequal 

 as in the higher types, and remain entirely distinct from each other, and the ankle 

 joint is not so \ erfect as in many of them. In his teeth his character is throughly 

 primitive. . . . His structural superiority consists solely in the complexity and 

 size of the brain. A very important lesson is derived from these and kindred 

 facts. The monkeys were anticipated in the greater fields of the world's activity 

 by more powerful rivals. The ancestors of the ungulates held the fields and the 

 swamps, and the carnivora, driven by hunger, learned the arts and cruelties of 

 the chase. The weaker ancestors of the quadrumana possessed neither speed nor 

 weapons of offense or defense, and nothing but an arboreal life was left them, 

 when they developed the prehensile powers of the feet. Their digestive system 

 unspecialized, their food various, their life the price of ceaseless vigilance, no 

 wonder that their inquisitiveness and wakefulness were stimulated and develo ed, 

 which is the condition of ] rogressive intelligence;" and adding that "the race 

 has not been to the swift, nor the battle to the strong," Professor Cope shows in 

 this case that the "survival of the most intelligent, and natural selection proves 

 to be, in the highest animal phase, intelligent selection." 



Mr. Fiske shows, in another way, that when variations in intelligence became 

 more important than variations in physical structure, they were seized upon, to 

 the relative exclusion of the latter. 



The earliest evidences of man must be sought for in his remains, for he must 

 have existed in much the same condition many ages before the use of rude stone 

 implements gave him any advantage in the struggle for life. These evidences 

 have never been found. When man acquired the habit of seeking the shelter of 

 of caverns, or the custom of burying in sepulchers, then it became possible to 

 preserve his remains for future generations to study ; but outside of these fortu- 

 nate receptacles, his remains have been rareley met with. The probable habits 

 of primitive man and his progenitors were of such a character as to render the 

 preservation of his remains one of extreme im robability. 



The herbivora, roaming in immense herds, fording streams, and seeking 

 shelter from the flies and heat in watery places, where, if they died, all the condi- 

 tions for the preservation of their remains might be expected ; the amphibious 

 mammals becoming well \ reserved in the matrix in which they perished ; the 

 colossal mammals becoming mired by their own weight ; all these various condi- 

 tions were favorable for the | reservation of those remains which are found in the 

 greatest abundance. 



The arboreal ancestors of man, on the other hand, left their remains strewn 

 on the forest-floor, or weathering in rude tree-nest, the most uncertain of all places 

 for their final preservation. 



Professor Marsh, in his magnificent monograph on the extinct fossil toothed 

 birds of North America, testifies that fossil birds are of the rarest occurrence, 

 and to their arboreal habits may be due their rarity; the remains of aquatic birds 

 being always more common. 



