34 ANCESTRAL MAN. 



natural history. Etymology is a kind of embryology ; and there 

 are verbal homologues and rudiments as well as animal ones. 



If fossil forms, discovered in the earth's crust, supply missing 

 zoological links, no less do fossil words, found in archaic manu- 

 scripts and in sculptures of the past, often reveal an unexpected 

 connection in nomenclature. 



A linguistic arrangement such as that of the Indo-European 

 tongues, is like a classification of botanical orders, and the gulf 

 that divides the Aryan, the Turanian and the Caucasian languages 

 is similar to that which separates mammals, birds and fishes. 



But, as great unlikeness of structure points to the immense 

 duration of animal life, so does great diversity of speech indicate 

 the high antiquity of mankind. 



How little has the coast-line altered since Caesar landed on 

 British shores nearly 2,000 years ago ; how remote must be the 

 period when this country, separated by no sea from Europe, was 

 traversed by palaeolithic hunters ; and, as the simple arts they 

 practised required many ages for their invention, perfection, and 

 wide diffusion, how certain it is, that when we have gone back to 

 those dim and distant days, we are yet far from having reached 

 the origin of our race. 



It is not a little remarkable that we owe all our knowledge of 

 these primitive beings, to their use of an indestructible material 

 for implements. They have left neither dwellings nor tombs, and 

 every vestige of their bodies has vanished away. But it is, perhaps, 

 more remarkable still, that all organic traces of a much less ancient 

 race, of the neolithic tribes of Lancashire, have vanished likewise, 

 though their silicious relics are found on the hill-tops every day. 



Of those who lived before the palaeolithic age, who wrought 

 only with horn or wood, we may remain for ever ignorant. But 

 by the flints that strew the ground, we can discern, however 

 faintly, the path ancestral man has trod. We can estimate his 

 patient ingenuity and marvel at his perennial courage. At one 

 time surrounded by tropical carnivores, deadly and terrible, and 

 at another time pierced by the storms of arctic winters ; a prey to 

 diseases he could not cure, and bewildered by the unseen forces 

 that encompassed him ; wandering through every form of error to 

 arrive at the first glimmerings of truth ; with no aid and no 

 knowledge from without; witless of the metals that were under 

 his feet, of the wealth of agriculture always in his reach ; it was 

 with a weapon of flint that he carved his fortune and smote his 

 adversaries, and raised himself from where he once stood, a little 

 higher than the beasts, to where he stands now, "a little lower 

 "than the angels." 



CLEGG S STEAM PRINTING WORKS, ROCHDALE. 



