THE OVARIAN EGG. 269 
CHAPTER XV. 
THE OVARIAN EGG. 
ALL important changes in the social and politi- 
eal condition of man, whether brought about by 
violent convulsions or effected gradually, are at 
once recognized as eras in the history of human- 
ity. But on the broad high-road of civilization 
along which men are ever marching, they pass by 
unnoticed the landmarks of intellectual progress, 
unless they chance to have some direct bearing 
on what is called the practical side of life. Such 
an era marked the early part of our own century ; 
and though at the time a thousand events seemed 
more full-freighted for the world than the dis- 
covery of some old bones in the quarries of Mont- 
martre, and though many a man seemed greater 
in the estimation of the hour than the professor 
at the Jardin des Plantes who strove to reconstruct 
these fragments, yet the story that they told 
lighted up all the past, and showed its true con 
nection with the present. 
Before the year 1800, mer had never suspected 
that their home had been tenanted in past times 
