232 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



frontosus, will need further discussion before their acceptance by 

 palaeontologists. With these domesticated or domesticable species 

 of ox, flourished in Switzerland the Bison priscus, a species which 

 the most strenuous efibrts of the early Europeans would not have 

 rendered capable of serving as a docile, milk-producing beast. The 

 musk-buffalo Bubalus (Ovihos) moschatus, which lived in glacial clay 

 and drift in England contemporary with the elephant, and tichorhine 

 rhinoceros, has not hitherto been found associated with the remains 

 of man. 



Morton, in his posthumous manuscripts,* said, " Why may we not 

 discover the remains of man in the tertiary deposits, in the cretace- 

 ous beds, or even in the oolites?" — a supposition which, considering 

 we have not yet quite proved his existence in the post-pliocene, is as 

 probable as that " for the real origin of man we must go immeasurably 

 further back from the time of the existence of man amongst the 

 Mammoths, into the great Pliocene or Miocene ages." 



When we find his remains in the tertiary or secondary strata, it 

 will be time enough to discuss the question. Till then, the negative 

 evidence which disproves the existence of monkeys, the ancestors 

 of man on the derivative hypothesis, in any stratum below the eocene 

 rocks, must check our desire to anticipate the conclusions which 

 future palaeontologists may arrive at, through a slow and cautious 

 process of induction and observation. 



With the broad question of the antiquity of the human race the 

 foregoing remarks have no necessary, or even contingent, connection. 

 A higher and more satisfactory evidence than any which the geologist 

 or the cranioscopist can bring to bear, is furnished us by the researches 

 of those ethnologists and philologists who have most studied the affi- 

 liations and relations of the most ancient languages of the globe. 

 Upon the supposition that such languages as the Sanscrit, Greco- 

 Latin, Teutonic, Keltic, and Lithuanian, have been derived from a 

 once-primeval " Arian" stock, a vast lapse of time is necessary during 

 which their derivation and divergence from such parent stem took 

 place. Upon the rejection of the "Arian" hypothesis,t and the 

 acceptance of the doctrine of diverse ethnic centres of linguistic 

 origin, an equal or greater lapse of time is necessary during which 

 such a language as the Greek could have improved by ascensive 

 development from the simple utterances of a barbarous early tongue 

 to the high grade of philological civilization when Homer wrote. 

 Such a supposition would corroborate the conclusions to which 

 a priori analogy would lead the geologist ; but it would leave the 

 problem of the origin of the inferior non-" Arian " races of men un- 

 solved. The great question of the origin of these races, whether as 

 our representatives in a state of arrested moral and mental develop- 

 ment ; whether as the scanty remnants of inferior types which, 

 called into being ages before the advent of the " Arian" race, have 

 passed the fore-ordaiued limit which "species" can attain, and are 



* Usher, in Nott and Gliildou, 'Types of Jlankind,' p. 343. 



t Crawfurd, ' Antiquity of ^lau on the Evidence of Lano-na"c.' Trans. Ethuolodcal 

 Society, 1862. ^ " 



