OP THE NILE AND GANGES. 647 



draw upon any department of human knowledge that coidd 

 throw light on the subjects which it investigates. Cuvier, in 

 the ' Discours Preliminaires,' exhausted the records and 

 traditions of every ancient people in search of arguments to 

 support the opinion that the advent of man upon the earth 

 dates from a comparatively late epoch. At the present time 

 the whole aspect of the subject is transformed. The science 

 is now intimately connected with archaeological ethnology, in 

 searching for evidence of the hand of man in the oldest 

 Quaternary fluviatile gravels of Europe. In other continents, 

 under different physical conditions, it may be possible to 

 interweave the indications of language and misty tradition 

 with the more certain results of palaeontological research, 

 and thus to aid us in arriving at that ' sjDeck now barely 

 visible in the distance, which is our goal to-day, and may be 

 our starting-point to-morrow.' I shall, therefore, not hesitate 

 to enter upon a complementary portion of the same walk of 

 investigation which is intimately connected with the thread 

 of the preceding speculations. 



[A portion of the paper is here omitted, as it corresponds 

 with a passage in the historical essay on 'Primeval Man,' 

 p. 573 to p. 579.— Ed.] 



The large question which these reflections concern is at 

 the present time followed up with the keenest intelligence and 

 with the closest scrutiny over a large portion of Europe. 

 But in the tropical regions, which promise to be the most 

 fertile of results, the ground has been barely broken. The 

 observations of Bussegger in the Valley of the Nile would 

 seem to have fallen into the oblivion which shrouded the 

 shrewd observations of Frere on the Hoxne implements, until 

 they were brought to light by the researches of Mr. John 

 Evans. In India also the inquiry, begun so auspiciously 

 nearly thirty years ago, appears to have stagnated in later 

 days, and to require a fresh impulse. The important dis- 

 coveries of Captains Speke and Grant will assuredly attract 

 explorers, until the affluents which feed the lake out of which 

 the White Nile flows are traced to their sources. It is 

 incredible that that great river should run for fifteen or 

 seventeen hundred miles, often through alluvial deposits, 

 ancient and modern, without yielding traces of its former 

 population. In the interest of the general investigation, I 

 have therefore thought it might be useful to bring together 

 the facts and speculations which are set forth in the preced- 

 ing observations, as a guide to future inquiry. 



