1876.] Primitive Man. ` 279 
trated. The ancient remains found in California, brought to the 
notice of the scientific world by Professor J. D. Whitney, and 
_ teferred by him to the tertiary period, exhibit man as a maker of 
instruments for grinding grain, and other implements of stone, 
and, as far as an imperfect skull goes, essentially the same in his 
anatomical features as now. Or should those instances be set 
aside, as some geologists, waiting for further discoveries, are in- 
clined to do, we still have remains from the gravels of the 
Somme in France, as well as the Ouse and other localities in 
England. Some of these last, Mr. Evans believes, date back to 
the time when the Needles of the Isle of Wight were connected 
with the mainland, the sea of Solent was the mouth of a river, 
and Britain was probably still a peninsula. ` The time since these 
conditions existed may not, he says, be estimated by years, but 
unquestionably. extends back an immense period beyond that 
covered by history. The abundance of flint implements belong- 
ing to the gravels above referred to shows that man was then and 
there far from being primitive. 
If the theory of evolution be true, and man was ever in a tran- 
sitional or strictly primitive state, without tools or implements, it 
will be obvious that all the knowledge we can expect ever to 
have of him in this condition must come through the remains of 
his own body, older than his inventions, which will carry us back 
still further towards, if not to, his starting-point, as the geologist 
is carried back in time to the early period of the existence of 
animals. Even with regard to these, geology fails to reveal to 
us their actual beginning. Possibly the early remains of man 
may never be known, for during the revolutions which have 
taken place on the surface of the earth and the inroads which 
the sea has made upon the land, if a suggestion of Cuvier may 
be accepted, “ the places where he [man] dwelt may have been 
utterly destroyed and his bones buried at the bottom of the ex- 
isting seas.” 
It is almost certain that his bones, if simply left on the sur- 
face, would, like those of land animals generally, be soon entirely 
destroy ed, either by the effects of the weather or by their consump- 
tion for food by wild animals. Nothing can be more striking 
than the complete destruction of the bones of the birds and rep- 
tiles, some of gigantic size, which once thronged the shores in 
the valley of the Connecticut River. Were it not for the pres- 
ervation of their seemingly more perishable footprints, the mere 
knowledge that they once lived would not now exist. The same 
