106 



DEVELOPMENT OF OEGANIC LIFE 



[Ch. IX. 



the fossil remains have not yet been detected in deposits older 

 than the post-tertiary. 



Antecedently to investigation, we might reasonably havp 



man 



back at least as far as those Pliocene strata in which nearly 



number of the mammalia 

 existing species, for of all the mammalia the human species 

 is the most cosmopolite, and perhaps more capable than any 

 other of surviving considerable vicissitudes in climate, and 

 in the physical geography of the globe. 



No inhabitant of the land exposes himself to so many 



waters as man, whether in a savage or a 

 civilised state ; and there is no animal, therefore, whose 

 skeleton is so liable to become imbedded in lacustrine or sub- 

 marine deposits : nor can it be said that his remains are 

 more perishable than those of other animals ; for in ancient 

 fields of battle, as Cuvier has observed, the bones of men 



dangers on the 



nave sunerea as little decomposi 

 were buried in the same grave. 



But even if the more solid 



impi 



might have remained eno-r 



as have 



the traces of the tenderest leaves of plants, and the soft 



Works of art, moreover, 



integuments of many animals, 

 composed of the most indestru 



materials 



times of history 



outlasted almost all the organic contents of sedimentary 

 rocks. Edifices, and even entire cities, have, within the 



been buried under volcanic ejections, sub- 

 the sea, or engulphed by earthquakes ; and 

 had these catastrophes been repeated throughout an indefinite 

 lapse of ages, the high antiquity of man would have been 



mer 



mor 



forms 



once covered the islands of the northern ocean, or of those 

 gigantic reptiles which at still later periods peopled the seas 

 and rivers of the northern hemisphere. 



Dr. Prichard has argued that the human race have not 

 always existed on the surface of the earth, because the < strata 

 of which our continents are composed were once a part of the 

 ocean's bed ' — < mankind had a beginning, since we can look 







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