244 



SCIENCE. 



[Yol. IV., No. 84. 



MICROSCOPIC SCIENCE. 1 



Pbof. T. G. Woemley delivered no formal address. 

 He gave only a short discourse, in which he described 

 the advantages and possibilities of two special appli- 

 cations of the microscope: first, to the detection of 

 very minute quantities of certain poisons, notably 

 arsenic, by the examination of the sublimate; second, 

 to the examination of blood stains. He described the 

 limits within which identification of different ani- 

 mals, and the recognition of human blood, is feasible ; 

 he denied that human blood can be absolutely iden- 

 tified; he also stated that the result of prolonged 

 experiments indicated that pure water is the best 

 reagent for restoring the blood-corpuscles in a stain 

 to their natural condition. 



MAN IN THE TERTIARIES* 



In studying the questions of his own origin and 

 antiquity, man has been hindered by many prejudices 

 and by many barriers of his own erection, the first 

 and most formidable of which was the theological 

 barrier of the Mosaic cosmogony. In process of 

 time this was partially removed; but other barriers to 

 free investigation arose, founded on the evidence col- 

 lected by the very men who had done most to destroy 

 the earlier obstacles. Cuvier declared that man, be- 

 ing the last and highest of creation, could never have 

 been contemporary with the extinct species of mam- 

 mals found in the quaternary beds. For a time all 

 evidence to the contrary was treated with contempt; 

 but Cuvier' s massive authority was finally over- 

 thrown by Perthes, Schmerling, and others. 



No sooner had the Cuvierian barrier against qua- 

 ternary man been demolished, than smaller barriers 

 of precisely the same nature were erected against the 

 tertiaries. Gaudry could not admit that the worked 

 flints discovered by the Abbe Bourgeois in the mio- 

 cene of Thenay were the remains of men; because he 

 found it difficult to believe, that, while every other 

 species of the miocene is now extinct, man alone 

 should have remained unchanged. Professor Daw- 

 kins in a similar line of argument assumes that man 

 cannot be looked for until the lower animals now in 

 existence made their appearance. In the eocene age 

 there were none of the present living genera of pla- 

 cental mammals, in the miocene none of the present 

 living species; and it is most unlikely that man 

 should appear at such a time. At this period the 

 apes (Simiaclae) haunting the forests of Europe were 

 the most highly organized types. Moreover, if man 

 were upon the earth in the miocene age, it is incredi- 

 ble that he should not have become something else 

 during those long ages in the course of which all the 



1 Abstract of an address before the section of histology and 

 microscopy of tbe American association for tbe advancement 

 of science, at Philadelphia, Sept. 4, by Prof. T. G. Wokmley of 

 the University of Pennsylvania, vice-president of the section. 



2 Abstract of an address to the section of anthropology of the 

 American association for the advancement of science, at Phila- 

 delphia, Sept. 4, by Dr. Edward S. Morse, of the Peabody 

 academy of science, Salem, Mass., vice-president of the section. 



miocene land mammalia ,have either assumed new 

 forms or been exterminated. And for similar reasons 

 Professor Dawkins says he cannot expect to find 

 traces of man in the pliocene. But such assumptions 

 are obstructive : they not only put a check upon re- 

 search, but they prevent the unbiased consideration 

 of fresh evidence. 



These theories have been greatly strengthened by 

 the idea that man has been evolved from the higher 

 apes, and that his nearest relations among these 

 creatures are those which are supposed to have ap- 

 peared last in the sequence. Nevertheless, we find the 

 evidences of man associated with extinct apes, and 

 the gap between them is by no means closed in these 

 earlier horizons. In the earliest remains of man 

 thus far recognized, we do not have the most pro- 

 nounced ape-like features, as we should have a right 

 to expect if both have sprung from the same stem, 

 and if man is limited to the quaternaries. All these 

 forms are still man, with a fair brain-case; though 

 the slight modifications toward an ape-like structure 

 have the deepest significance in clearly indicating the 

 direction from which he sprang. 



If paleontologists are right, the first anthropoid 

 apes have been found in the middle eocene, and later 

 still a more generalized form called Oreopithicus; and 

 side by side with these are found chipped flints if we 

 are to accept the authority of their discoverer Bour- 

 geois and the opinion of Mortillet and others. If 

 man existed then, — and on theoretical grounds there 

 is no reason to believe that he did not exist, — we 

 must look much farther back for the approach of 

 these two groups. 



The earliest evidences of man must be sought in 

 his remains, and not in his works; but the very con- 

 ditions of life which characterized early man and his 

 associates render the preservation of their remains 

 a matter of extreme improbability. The herbivora 

 in herds, seeking the shelter of watery places, would 

 in dying become mired, and thus preserved in a 

 matrix for the future explorer. Aquatic forms are in- 

 finitely more abundant as fossils than land or aerial 

 forms, — water-birds than land-birds. The arboreal 

 ancestors of man, and the probable habits of man 

 himself, would leave their bones to bleach in the field 

 or forest, to decompose and disappear long before an 

 entombment was possible. It was only when man 

 acquired the art of sepulture, or sought refuge in 

 caves, that the preservation of his remains became 

 assured. Surface changes, however, have been so 

 wide-spread and profound as to nearly obliterate all 

 trace of these places, and when preserved the harvest 

 from them has been of the most meagre description. 

 Of nearly fifty caves examined by Schmerling in Bel- 

 gium, only two or three contained human remains. 

 Lund, who examined eight hundred caves in Brazil, 

 found only six containing human remains. The 

 grain of the Swiss lake-dwellers, and even the bread 

 they made, have been preserved ; but human bones 

 are of scanty occurrence. The Danish peat-beds 

 have as yet yielded none, though stone implements 

 and other objects are found there in abundance. 



Chief among the agencies in destroying the evi- 



