54 Where did Life Begin? 



to the verge of everlasting ice, subduing, 

 slaying, and exterminating, first his own an- 

 cestry, his nearest but now weak rival, which 

 by lingering behind and struggling for life in 

 a climate of increasing cold, would have be- 

 come extremely degenerated and so easily 

 disposed of, if not actually exterminated, by 

 the climate itself, thus leaving as the nearest 

 in resemblance to man, and yet the remotest 

 in actual relationship both to him and his an- 

 cestry, the later tribes of anthropoid apes 

 since developed nearer to the equator, from 

 the next lower animals which accompanied him 

 in his southward march. 



This last proposition, however, is but a 

 vague and very deductive supposition, for 

 which nothing is claimed beyond a possibility, 

 or bare probability. Notwithstanding, to sus- 

 tain the main conclusion herein stated, with all 

 the essential results and outcome of the same, 

 it seems to me to be only necessary to claim, 

 what would be generally admitted, viz. : that 

 the whole earth was at one time too warm to 

 maintain life, and that no discovered cause or 

 fact points to a less average difference between 



