326 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 



glacial epoch over the latitudes of Europe, the pre-glacial 

 animals seem to have receded to southern and more genial 

 climates, and again on its departure they appear, in some of 

 their species, to have returned to their old areas. It was 

 during this post-glacial return that man seems to have made 

 his first appearance in Europe — a fisher and hunter, forming 

 rude stone implements, and, so far as geology has discovered, 

 very low in the scale of civilisation.. But while mammothian 

 man was struggling along the river-banks of Europe for a 

 scanty subsistence, other families of his race were in all pro- 

 bability — we may almost say were undoubtedly — enjoying a 

 higher civilisation in the sub-tropical and higher tropical 

 regions of Africa and Asia. Were these Asiatic races of the 

 same variety of our species as the Abbeville flint-formers, 

 or did they, though enjoying a higher degree of civilisation, 

 belong to some older but inferior variety? Much, indeed, 

 in the matter of man's antiquity will depend upon how this 

 question is answered by subsequent discovery. If they be- 

 long to the same race, and there be no indication of any 

 inferior species of our kind, in accordance with the great 

 law of animal development, then, geologically speaking, 

 man is of comparatively recent origin, and the question is 

 narrowed to one or other of his existing varieties. Our own 

 opinion is that, granting a law of development, the higher 

 animals pass through fewer intermediate stages than the 

 lower, and that, in man's case, species more closely related 

 to the quadrumana are scarcely to be expected. But while 

 this may be true, it is equally certain that if there be any 

 truth in geological development at all, the higher varieties 

 must be more recent than the lower ; and thus the white 

 variety of man more recent than either the Bed Indian, the 

 Negro, the Malay, or the Mongol. And it is equally certain, 

 according to any law of development, that the older and 

 lower varieties must first pass away — a fact in wonderful 



animals which approach man nearest now exist, and where fossil remains 

 turn np in greatest variety and abundance. The earliest date to which man 

 has as yet been traced back in Europe, is probably but as yesterday in com- 

 parison with the epoch at which he made his appearance in more favoured 

 regions." — On the asserted occurrence of human bones in the ancient fluviatile deposits 

 of the Nile and Ganges — Quarterly Journal of Geology, 1865. 



