614 THE UNIVERSE. 



these primitive vestiges of art have been found different 

 implements which their inhabitants made use of — mill- 

 stones, stone knives and weaj)ons, besides collars and 

 bracelets in bronze or Baltic amber, and even human 

 skeletons.^ 



Such are the grand scenes of the temporary creations 

 Avhich successively lent life to the earth, and during each 

 of which the sublime essence of life seems to be constantly 

 progressing over matter till it reaches our species, the 

 genius of which appears the highest reflection of the 

 divinity. 



But it is in this intellectual supremacy that man inevi- 

 tably finds the source of the doubts which overwhelm him. 

 His life is exhausted in vainly attempting to efface the past 

 and fathom the future. His thoughts, uncertain and in- 



' Oiu- learned naturalist Victor Meuiiier, in the* remarkable woi-k wliicli he 

 has just published, gives the following curious details about the lacustrine dwell- 

 ings ;— 



"In New Guinea the Papuans also build on piles, but these are sunk in 

 the sea at a certain distance from the shore, and parallel with it. They support, 

 at a height of eight or ten feet above the water, a flooring formed of round pieces 

 of wood, which in its tux-n supports circular or square cabins, formed of stakes 

 placed near each other, and of interlaced rushes, and covered by conical or two- 

 frouted roofs. One or two narrow bridges lead to the shore. 



'■Except in the difference between a lacustrine and maritime site, the habita- 

 tions of these Pceonians on Lake Prasias whom Megabyzus could not subdue 

 were exactly similar-. — Herodotus, book v. cap. 16. 



"Tlie settlements of those Africaus whose aquatic city, built in a creek of the 

 river Tsadda, caused so much astonishment some ten years ago to Dr. Baikie, the 

 English naturalist, then a member of the expedition in the Pleiad on the Nigei', 

 are also constructed quite on the same plan. 



"On the approach of strangers the inhabitants issued from their abodes, the 

 water being up to their knees. One child was up to the waist. 'We saw some of 

 these huts,' says the doctor, 'which the inhabitants, if they be inhabited, could 

 only enter or leave by diving like beavers. We could not have imagined,' he 

 adds, 'reasonable creatures forming, as it were from taste, a colony of beavers, 

 having the manners of the hippopotami and crocodiles which infest the neigh- 

 bouring marshes.'" — Victor Meunier, La Science et les Savants en 1SG4.- Paris, 

 1S65, p. SO. 



