Man and the Universe. 4$ 



order of geological formation, that he did first ap- 

 pear on this globe. He will throw as 

 much light on geology and the other Geology. 



sciences as they throw on him. At 

 present, he is not shown to have walked this earth at 

 any point farther back than the diluvial period; as 

 M. d'Estienne just now affirms, " there is no geologist 

 of note who admits any longer even the possibility 

 of man having existed in the lower tertiary age." 

 General considerations forbid us to expect that we 

 shall ever find it shown. For, if man is the head 

 and completion of the physical and organic world, 

 as all admit, and evolutionists no less than others, 

 he could not appear till the physical conditions of 

 things, and both the vegetable and animal kingdoms, 

 had received their just development. As competent 

 science affirms, he must be the last in both the 

 stratigraphical and the palaeontological lines. Be- 

 fore that, he were an anachronism. 



47. So, to conclude this criticism of the prehis- 

 toric ape-man, whose geography and chronology we 

 have subjected to a little analysis, we 

 may express ourselves in the fine gen- r *^*" ge e 

 eralization of Agassiz. He says that, as 

 the reptiles of the secondary age are in no respect 

 descended from the fishes of the primary or palaeo- 

 zoic age, so man in the fourth or quaternary nowise 

 descends from the animals before him in the third 

 or tertiary period. The link by which they are all 

 connected is of a higher and immaterial nature. 



