﻿Ixxii PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



of the extinct quadrupeds, the human skull being referable to the 

 same type as that of the American Indian of Brazil. But although 

 such fossils may have been very ancient, historically speaking, we 

 must wait for additional testimony before we allow this single in- 

 stance to convince us that the human race coexisted with the extinct 

 Brazilian and Pampean fauna, in which case it must have outlived 

 one assemblage of mammalia and witnessed the coming in of another, 

 perfectly distinct*. Nor can we reconcile the facts of the case 

 with the hypothesis that man was the exterminating agent of the 

 quadrupeds which have disappeared. Not only have the Mega- 

 therium, Auchenia, Mastodon, and other huge quadrupeds died out 

 since these caves were filled with fossil bones, but several also of the 

 contemporary minute creatures, such as seven species of bats and 

 thirty-two of Glires, and many small opossums. The five extinct 

 apes moreover, described by Lund, were not associated with fossil 

 bones of the living species of apes which now abound in Brazil, and 

 in the extirpation of which man has made but little progress. 



As all the vertebrate, and nearly all the invertebrate eocene 

 fossils belong to species now no more, we could never reasonably 

 expect the remains of man to form part of an eocene fauna. Pre- 

 viously to experience, the utmost that analogy entitled us to look 

 for in rocks of such high antiquity was the occurrence of some 

 dominant species, different from the human, yet holding a cor- 

 responding position in the then living creation. Neither the osseous 

 remains nor the handiwork of such a being have ever been detected ; 

 and as I before stated, although there have been, since the lower 

 eocene epoch, so many complete changes in the species of warm- 

 blooded quadrupeds inhabiting the land, no progress whatever has 

 been made in filling up the chasm which now separates man from 

 the inferior animals. In that rich fauna, probably of miocene date, 

 brought to light by the exertions of Dr. Falconer and Major Cautley, 

 in the Sub-Himalayan or Sewalik Hills, there are many extinct spe- 

 cies of elephantine quadrupeds. As the living Indian elephant is 

 more intelligent than the African species, it may possibly also be 

 superior to all the extinct proboscidians of the Sewalik group ; but 

 if so, how could it supply even one of those missing links in the 



* For an abstract of Lund's discoveries, see Archiac, Hist, des Progres de la 

 Geol. torn. ii. p. 385. 



