EUROPE BEFORE THE ARRIVAL OF MAN. 729 



species of Miocene land mammals, and several of the genera, are now extinct : 

 and Mr. Dawkins urges that if man existed at that remote period it is incredible 

 that he alone should have subsisted unchanged amid the destruction or metamor- 

 phosis of all other species. But it seems to me that Mr. Dawkins partly answers 

 this argument himself when he observes that, " were any man-like animal living 

 in the Miocene age he might reasonably be expected to be not man, but inter- 

 mediate between man and something else, and to bear the same relation to our- 

 selves as the Miocene apes, such as the mesopithecus, bear to those now living, 

 sucli as the semnopithecus." Why may not such a semi-human man have existed 

 in the Miocene age, the race having undergone since then changes parallel to 

 those which have affected the apes, or to those which have affected generally such 

 Miocene genera as have survived down to our times ? No remains of any such 

 creature have been found, but it is indisputable that artificially chipped flints 

 and the artificially cut rib of an extinct species of manatee have been discovered 

 in mid-Miocene strata in France. Mr. Dawkins is inclined to adopt M. Gaudry's 

 suggestion that the flints may have been chipped and the rib cut by the great 

 man-like ape, the dryopithecus ; for although it is not known that any existing 

 apes are in the habit of chipping flints or cutting bones, yet it is not impossible 

 that the dryopithecus may have somewhat surpassed the present apes in intelli- 

 gence. On the other hand, M. de Mortillet regards these relics as conclusive 

 proof of the existence of man in mid-Miocene Gaul. The question can hardly 

 be decided at present. 



But it does not seem to me that Mr. Dawkins' line of argument, which is so 

 conclusive when applied to the Eocene age, is equally conclusive when applied 

 to the Miocene. At an epoch when there were no true apes as yet to be found, 

 when even the lemurs bore marks of kinship with the ancestors of ruminants and 

 pachyderms, and when the carnivorous type was but half developed, it would 

 clearly be idle to expect to find traces of man. But at an epoch when many 

 modern genera had come into existence in all the principal orders, and when in 

 particular there existed an ape as high, or higher, in organization than the mod- 

 ern chimpanzee or gorilla, I can see no such overwhelming improbability of the 

 existence of man himself. No doubt, however, if the remains of Miocene man 

 are ever to be found, they will disclose a type of humanity quite different from, 

 and very likely much lower than, any that we now know. It is not at all improba- 

 ble that such remains will by and by be discovered in some part of the earth, if 

 not in Europe. By the time the strata of Africa have been explored with any- 

 thing like the minuteness with which those of France and England have been 

 examined, we shall be very likely to meet with clear indications of the former 

 presence of half-human man, and it will not be strange if such indications lead us 

 far back into the Miocene epoch. 



In the Pliocene period the geographical structure of Europe began to be 

 much more like what it is to-day. Hitherto, during the greater part of the 

 Tertiary epoch, large portions of Russia and Siberia had been submerged, so that 

 the continent of Asia did not extend nearly so far north as at present. A belt of 



