136 



well as in Al'rica ; and even were suuu ui ai;ci5 mo- 

 covered, we are not to believe that the lowest existing 

 variety may not have been preceded in later-tertiary 

 times by others still more lowly both in physical 

 and mental endowments. 



We are aware that it is argued by some, appa- 

 rently little acquainted with the physical relations of 

 life, that it is only under the existing conditions of 

 the globe that mankind could have subsisted, and 

 that all the preceding geological epochs were spent, 

 as it were, in the " preparation of the earth for the 

 reception of the human race.'' It is true that aU we 

 know of the present, as well as aU that geology has 

 told us of the past, leads to the belief that life is 

 adapted to the conditions by which it is surrounded, 

 and further, that in the ascent of plant-life and animal- 

 life which palaeontology has revealed, there is also a 

 mutual co-adaptation of living forms ; but seeing the 

 vast range of conditions — ^polar, temperate, and tropi- 

 cal — under which man now exists, and the extreme 

 variety of substances on which he can subsist, and 

 that often exclusively, there is no reason why rude 

 races (like the Esquimaux) may not have lived on 

 seals and fishes during the later stages of the glacial 

 period, or even (like the South Sea Islanders) on the 

 palm fruits of the tertiary epoch. This argument of 

 the " preparation of the earth for man," so often 



