SECT. IY.] HUMAN FOSSILS. 195 



Perthes ; and it must certainly be admitted that the probability 

 of this view is annually increasing. 



Dr. Lund, 1 who is said to have discovered human fossils in 

 not less than eight different localities (in Minas Greraes), infers 

 that the population of America is more ancient than that of 

 the Old World. Usher relates 2 that, in the excavations for the 

 gas works at New Orleans, a human skeleton had been found at 

 a depth of 16 feet under the cypress forests, the skull of which 

 he considers as belonging to the American race, and the age 

 of which he calculates at 57,000 years. Several of such pre- 

 tended undoubted cases are quoted. Boucher de Perthes 3 has 

 excavated so-called antediluvian antiquities, stone hatchets, 

 intermixed with fossil bones of extinct animals. Nilssohn, 4 

 distinguishes three ancient races in Scandinavia, one of 

 which is pre-historic ; and Wilde 5 in Ireland, and Wilson 6 

 in Scotland, described several kinds of pre-Celtic skulls. 

 Although we may pass over and leave to geology the investiga- 

 tion of the theory of the existence of man in an earlier geolo- 

 gical epoch, still we may admit a very high antiquity of the 

 human race. We maintain, however, that at present there 

 exists no proof of an earlier race now extinct, nor of the 

 existence of the human race before the present geological 

 epoch. Though it could be proved that Scotland possessed a 

 population before the arrival of the Celts, or that the American 

 race was 57,000 years old, nothing is yet gained for the asser- 

 tions of H. Smith. 



Neither can the remains of old buildings, the object and 

 origin of which is unknown to present generations of the respec- 

 tive countries, be adduced in support of the above theories ; 

 for it has repeatedly happened that uncivilized nations have 

 taken possession of a territory, without preserving the history of 

 its former inhabitants any more than their own. And thus the 



1 " Nouv. aim. des voy.," i, 363, 1845. 



2 Nott and Gliddon, p. 338. 



3 Antiq. Celt, et Antediluv.," Paris, 1849. 



4 " Keports of the British Association," p. 31, 1847. 



5 " Lecture on the Ethnology of the ancient Irish," 1844 ; Davis, " Crania 

 Britannica." 



6 " Archaeol. and pre-historical annals of Scotland," Edinburgh, 1851. 



02 



