206 



Tlie First Men. 



varying forms of vegetal and animal life. The unity of nature is its 

 liigliest law, and hence we have no doubt that as the evening of the 

 seven til day drew on, toward tlie close of the Pliocene epoch, these forms 

 of life were subjected to modification, rendering them more conformable 

 to the wants of man ; and that with such modification the development 

 of man took place. 



Dawson, who also declines to accept the pre-glacial origin of man, 

 ill his Story of the Earth and Man, remarks: Was the Miocene period 

 on the whole a better age of the world than that in which we live ? 

 In some respects it was. Had we lived in the Miocene, we might 

 have sat under our vine and fig-tree equally in Greenland and Spitz- 

 bergen and in those more southern climes to which this privilege is 

 now restricted. We might have enjoyed a great variety of rich and 

 nutritive fruits, and, if sufficiently muscular, and able to cope with the 

 gigantic mammals of the period, we might have engaged in either the 

 life of the hunter or that of the agriculturist under advantages which 

 we do not now possess. On the whole, the Miocene presents to us in 

 these respects the perfection of the Neozoic [Kainozoic] time, and its 

 culmination in so far as the nobler forms of brute animals and of 

 plants are concerned. Had men existed in these days, however, they 

 should have been, in order to suit the conditions surrounding them, 

 a race of giants; and they would probably have felt the want of many 

 of those more modern species belonging to the flora and fauna of 

 Europe and Western Asia on which man has so much depended lor 

 his civilization." 



This certainly foreshadows the domicil of the human race, and we 

 may be sure that the forerunner of man is not far distant, if the unity 

 of nature is to be preserved. There has been found in the Upper 

 Miocene of the south of France an ape equaling man in stature, and 

 apparently living among the trees and feeding upon plants. This ape, 

 ^termed the Dryopithecus, is considered by M. Lartel, from its denti- 

 tion, to have approached nearer to man than any other existing species 

 of ape . 



AVe must now consider the habitat of the first men, if we would 

 reach an approximate solution of the problem we are considering. 

 Wallace, in his great work on the Geographical Distribution of Ani- 

 mals, says that " all the chief types of animal life appear to have origi- 

 nated in the great north temperate or northern continents. The pro- 

 cess of development has been more rapid in the north, and has resulted 

 in more varied and higher types." This law of nature, we believe, is 

 accepted as incontrovertible ; and it seems to us clear that man cannot 

 be an exception thereto. He could not have originated at the south, 

 either on an imaginary Lemurian continent or elsewhere south of the 



