PREHISTORIC MAN IN AMERICA. 137 



which at the present time occur but rarely, or of their habits • and mental attrib- 

 utes, nothing, of course, can be known. 



These characters, when, found, will have become merged so completely with 

 those of the ancestors on another line that new genera will have to be erected to 

 embrace them. This conclusion brings no strain upon the accepted methods of 

 logical deduction. For these remains we are still seeking. 



There are many species of mammals whose early progenitors are not known, 

 and, though many wide and important gaps in conspicuous groups of mammals 

 have been filled up, thanks to the labors of our American paleontologists, there 

 are many " missing links " in the groups as well as in that group to which we 

 belong. The intense impatience to fill this gap in man's genealogy arises from 

 the special interest that man naturally feels in his own species. How long we 

 have patiently waited for those links which Geoffroy St. Hilaire so earnestly 

 looked for — the closing up of wide gaps between the paleotherium, hipparion, and 

 horse ; and who could have foretold in his day that, in the wild regions far be- 

 yond the Mississippi, amid hostile savages, these precious remains would be 

 brought to light ! 



Many other intermediate forms, of equal importance in forming connected 

 series, though not so well known to the public, have been discovered by Leidy, 

 Marsh and Cope. Indeed, such intermediate and generalized forms have been 

 added to the mammalia that we have creatures combining the characters of the 

 pigs and ruminants, animals possessing the characters of the hoofed beasts, 

 carnivora, and rodents ! Professor Flower, the distinguished English osteologist, 

 confesses that the modern classification of mammals completely breaks down in 

 the light of these revelations. Cuvier's law of the "Correlation of Structures," 

 although applicable within certain limits, would have led him into the gravest 

 errors as applied to the fossils known at present. Professor Marsh, in his ad- 

 dress on the "History and Methods of Paleontological Discovery," says that if 

 Cuvier "had before him the disconnected fragments of an eocene tillodont, he 

 would undoubtedly have referred a molar tooth to one of his pachyderms, an 

 incisor tooth to a rodent, and a claw-bone to a carnivore." 



The sharp lines of demarkation which discriminate the various groups of 

 mammals in Cuvier's day have been, in many cases, rounded off or completely 

 obliterated. Man, who is still seeking his own phylum with those of many other 

 species of mammals, must patiently wait. 



Huxley, in his courageous Httle book on "Man's Place in Nature," published 

 nearly twenty years ago, closes by asking the question: "Where, then, must 

 we look for primitive man ? Was the oldest Homo sapiens ^^Woctne or miocene, or 

 yet more ancient ? In still older strata do the fossilized bones of an ape more 

 anthropoid, or a man more pithecoid, than any yet known, await the researches 

 of some unborn paleontologist ? Time will show ; but, in the meanwhile, if any 

 form of the doctrine of progressive development is correct, we must extend, by 

 long epochs, the most liberal estimate that has yet been made of the antiquity of 

 man." — IS^orth American Review. 



