• 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 mammotliian 
man was struggling along the river-banks of Europe for a 
scanty subsistence, other families of liis 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 tl]is 
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 Eed 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 Tip in greatest variety and abundance. The earliest date to which man 
lias 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 hones in the ancient fluviatile deposits 
of the Nile and Ganges — Quarterly Journal of Geology, 1865. 
