﻿418 Canadian Record of Science. 



species now extinct. A correlation of tlie two faunas 

 with a view of ascertaining their chronological relations is 

 beset with many difficulties, but there seems reason 

 for accepting tliis Indian Pleistocene fauna as in some 

 degree more ancient than the European. 



Is this not a case in which the imagination may be 

 fairly invoked in aid of science ? May we not from these 

 data attempt in some degree to build up and reconstruct 

 the early history of the human family? There, in 

 Eastern Asia, in a tropical climate, with the means of 

 subsistence readily at hand, may we not picture to 

 ourselves our earliest ancestors gradually developing from 

 a lowly origin, acquiring a taste for hunting, if not indeed 

 being driven to protect themselves from the beasts 

 around them, and evolving the more complicated forms of 

 tools or weapons from the simpler Hakes which had 

 previously served them as knives ? May we not imagine 

 that, when once the stage of civilisation denoted by these 

 Palaeolithic implements had been reached, the game for 

 the hunter became scarcer, and that liis life in conse- 

 quence assumed a more nomad character ? Then, and 

 possibly not till then, may a series of migrations to " fresh 

 woods and pastures new" not unnaturally have ensued, 

 and these following the usual course of '' westward 

 towards the setting sun" miglit eventually lead to a 

 Palaeolithic population finding its way to the extreme 

 borders of Western Europe, where we find such numerous 

 traces of its presence. 



How long a term of years may be involved in such 

 a migration it is impossible to say, but that such a migra- 

 tion took place the phenomena seems to justify us in 

 believing. It can hardly be supposed that the process 

 that I have shadowed forth was reversed, and that 

 man, having originated in North-Western Europe, in 

 a cold climate where clothing was necessary and food 

 scarce, subsequently migrated eastward to India and 



