310 THE DOCTRINE OF DESCENT. 
fore a Mediterranean race already existed 12,000 years 
ago. But what space of time was requisite to enable 
primitive man to separate into races, is entirely beyond 
computation, and the more so as not the siehiest: trace 
of him has hitherto been found. 
With the invariable testimony of Geology that the 
periods of the terrestrial strata imperceptibly merged 
into one another, and that, especially from the Ter- 
tiary, through the Diluvial period, to the present age, 
continuity has been only locally interrupted, the ques- 
tion of the “fossil man,” formerly looked upon as 
cardinal, has assumed another aspect. In Europe, man 
lived with the mammoth and the rhinoceros with a 
bony nasal partition (Elephas primogenius, Rhinocerus 
tichorhinus). It has been asserted that European man 
existed as early as the upper Tertiary age, but the evi- 
dence is disputable. Such remains as we have of this 
oldest man known tous, display a high grade of develop- 
ment, and certainly belong to the period at which man 
had already found in language the implement where-: 
with gradually to free himself from the dross of his: 
lowly origin. Whether the primitive man be found or 
not, his origin is certain. 
