578 CENOZOIC TIME. 



the mountain.) Bones of the Mastodon and Elephant were obtained 

 from the upper drift of the same vicinity. 



Prof. J. D. Whitney has described a skull, from Calaveras County, 

 which was found, according to the owner of the mining claim, at a 

 depth of 130 feet from the surface, underneath the lava-bed. Doubts 

 of its authenticity have been expressed by others who have examined 

 the evidence ; but Whitney, in his latest publication on the subject 

 (On the Auriferous Gravels of the Sierra Nevada, 1879), refers to 

 corroborating testimony, and gives it full credit. Whitney also men- 

 tions the discovery of flint implements in the Auriferous gravel in 

 other parts of California. The fossil plants of the gravels are re- 

 ferred to the Pliocene (or partly Miocene) by Lesquereux. The few 

 Mammalian remains include the Champlain Mastodon and Elephant, 

 but, in some places, Pliocene species. The skul], according to Prof. 

 Jeffries Wyman, resembles that of a modern Indian, especially the 

 Esquimaux, but has a more prominent forehead and a larger chamber 

 within. Flint implements have been described by C. C. Abbott from 

 stratified drift, probably of the Champlain period, near Trenton, N. J., 

 and by C. M. Wallace, from similar deposits near Richmond, Va. 



Dr. Wyman states, respecting the remains from shell-heaps in Florida, that they have 

 the characteristics of the ordinary Indian ; the tibiae were flattened (platycnemic), but 

 this is common among the American Indians, as well as in the prehistoric remains of 

 Europe. In Brazil, human remains were found many years since, by Lund, in cav- 

 erns, along with extinct Quaternary Mammals; and Clausen has reported the occur- 

 rence of pottery in a bed of stalagmite containing these Mammals. 



2. Man at the head of the System of Life- — In the appearance of 

 Man, the system of life, in progress through the ages, reached its 

 completion, and the animal structure its highest perfection. Another 

 higher species is not within the range of our conceptions. For the 

 Vertebrate type, which began during the Paleozoic in the prone or 

 horizontal Fish, became erect in Man, and thus completed, as Agassiz 

 has observed, the possible changes in the series, to its last term. An 

 erect body and an erect forehead admit of no step beyond. 



But, besides this, Man's whole structure declares his intellectual 

 and spiritual nature. His fore-limbs are not organs of locomotion, 

 as they are in all other Mammals ; they have passed from the loco- 

 motive to the cephalic series, being made to subserve the purposes of 

 the head ; and this transfer is in accordance with a grand law in 

 nature, which is at the basis of grade and development. The cephal- 

 ization of the animal has been the goal in all progress ; and in Man 

 we mark its highest possible triumph. 



Man was the first being that was not finished on reaching adult 

 growth, but was provided with powers for indefinite expansion, a will 



