(iHOI.OdirAI. 'I'nl'ICS. 
479 
species admit botanical determination. Nearly the wliolo of tlioso 
species were objects of culture, iuid consequently introduced from 
other countries simultaneously with; or soon after, the immigration 
of the tribes who peopled ancient Egypt. Many of them, as the 
date-j)alm, the tliix, the cercalia, etc., may be proved to have been 
cultivaled as early as under the reign of Menes (B.C., 3()2:J). Prof. 
Ung(!r has found no traces of any change from one species into 
another having taken place during a period of nearly fifty centuries, 
from Menes to oui' times. 
Ossiferous Cavern. Proceed. Imp. Academy, Vienna, July 14, 1859. 
Prof. 0. Schmidt, of Gratz, has found in the Grebcuzer Alp, Upper 
Styria, a fissm-e, or cavern, containing remarkably well preserved re- 
mains of the Elk, together with those of another extinct species of 
tlie genus Cervus. 
GEOLOGICAL TOPICS. 
THE FIRST TRACES OF MAN ON THE EARTH. 
( Continued from page 434.) 
Tlie second volume of M. de Perthes' hook, that which we have to deal with 
especially iu this notice, is illustrated by twenty-six plates coutauiiug 
nearly five hundred figures. In the interim, too, hetween tlie puhhcation of 
the first and second volumes, that author added greatly to his collection of 
primitive (antediluvian) and Celtic instruments (those of historic periods). 
This collection is now unrivalled, and lias been accumulated by travels and pux- 
cliases from aU parts of the world. To make sure of the origin of these 
objects, M. Boucher dc Perthes has lumself been to search for them, not only 
ill the North, iu Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Litliuaiiia, Poland, and Russia, 
hut also in the South, where these stone-implements are much rarer, iu Spain, 
Italy, Sicily, Greece, Turkey, along the shores of the Black Sea, and lastly, he 
has carried his researclies even into Asia and the French African possessions. 
His object iu these travels was not only to collect specimens, but also to con- 
sult foreign sacaiis ; and he acknowledges iu glowing terms the courtesy he 
everywhere met with, and the llatteruig and ready aid given to his researches. 
His book, so controverted iu France, he found had met with better reception 
abroad, and morever that it had also been better comprehended as detaihug the 
proofs that " a race before unkuo\ni, a human family of which the origin was 
lost in the night of Time — a race contemporaneous with the great pacliydcrms 
of whicli we find the remains, liad lived upon the soil we tread, and, many ages 
old, had been ^ritness to terrible revolutions, and at length to that last catas- 
trophe which had changed the surface of the globe, and modified, \vith its 
climates, the form of nearly every livmg species." The former long existence 
ui Europe of tliis ])eople, which M. Boucher dc Pertlies considers to have 
ended with tlic Ueluge, is supported by demonstrative proofs. 
