204 
DOTTINGS ON THE ROADSIDE. [Chap. XII.-B. S. 
Indians, amongst them the son of the one who had 
shown the Javali for three cows, and who was then 
working on the mine. A pure American Indian is 
always a subject of interest,—destined as he seems to 
be to disappear from the earth, in order to make room 
for the negro, Aryan, and Mongol, the only three 
races who at present show no sign of decadence. 
But races have their youth and old age as well as 
species and individuals; and nature, I suppose, has 
not been less generous to the American Indian than 
to the rest of mankind. My belief is that he had his 
fair innings. In the southern parts of North America, 
where his disappearance is close at hand, we find him 
associated with a flora which, during the Molasse or 
Miocene period of our globe, extended across the At¬ 
lantic to Europe, and—according to my theory, too 
long to develope here—it is not improbable that he 
occupied Europe ages before the Aryan race left its 
Asiatic home. When the flora of the Miocene period 
was swept away in Europe, and the island of Atlantis 
sank below the level of the ocean, the American In¬ 
dian disappeared with them in those parts, though he 
survives to this day in the southern parts of the North 
American continent. He represents, if my conjectures 
be right, a race much older than the races that have 
supplanted him. A similar change, slow it is true, but 
none the less certain, is now going on in the southern 
hemisphere, where a still older flora, which also at one 
time extended to Europe, and a still older human race 
are disappearing.* 
See my article on “New Holland in Europe,” in Hardvvickes 
Popular Science Review.’ 
