Where did Life Begin? 53 



thumb, and so having the possibility of all 

 things — shared this northern home, this com- 

 mon and immensely remote origin, earlier by 

 long epochs than the glacial period, it would 

 afford a possible ground for the claim of the 

 unity of the origin of man, and also a reason 

 for the absence on the earth of his immediate 

 predecessor. His arboreal progenitor in the 

 pioneer ranks of this great southern move- 

 ment, ages before the quatenary (during all 

 of which period man has probably inhabited 

 the earth), was possibly driven naked by the 

 ever following, merciless cold, thus keeping 

 him within the southward moving tropical cli- 

 mate, down the eastern and western conti- 

 nents alike, until it and he, arriving in the 

 lapse of ages at the equatorial belt, and being 

 always at the head and still rising in the scale 

 of being by this movement, discipline, and 

 process, became sufficiently advanced by slow 

 degrees to build fires, clothe himself, make 

 implements, and, possibly, domesticate ani- 

 mals, at least the first and most useful to 

 primitive man, the dog, and so prepared for 

 conflict and for all climates, turned backward 



