But M. Desnoyers only brought forward proofs of a single kind, and such as are not appreciated at their full value until we are used to them. Thus his work was at first received with a certain amount of distrust. He was asked to produce, if not pliocene man himself, at least some objects of his industry, and, in particular, the weapons which would enable him to attack, and the knives with which he could cut up the elephant and rhinoceros, or the great deer, whose bones all bear the marks of more or less deep incision which he attributes to man. M. l'Abbé Bourgeois soon replied to these demands, and in the presence of the worked flints which he placed before competent judges, all doubt disappeared.

Unfortunately, the gravel of Saint-Prest is considered by a sufficient number of geologists to belong rather to quaternary deposits, which are more recent than undoubted tertiary formations. It ought probably to be placed in the period of transition which separates two distinct epochs. Perhaps it is contemporaneous with the deposit of the Victoria cave in Yorkshire, from which Tiddeman extracted a human fibula, and which this naturalist regarded as having been formed a little before the great glacial cold. In short, the discoveries of MM. Desnoyers and Tiddeman take back the existence of man to the confines of the tertiary period.

The discoveries in Italy take us still further. On different occasions, and since 1863, some Italian savants thought that they had discovered in undoubted pliocene deposits traces of human industry, and even human bones. These results were, however, for different reasons successively doubted and rejected by the most competent judges.

But M. Capellini has just discovered, in 1876, clearer proofs of man's existence in pliocene times in the clay deposits of Monte Aperto, near Sienne, and in two other places. The eminent professor of Bologna has found in these localities, the age of which is not contested, bones of the balonotus bearing numerous deep incisions, which it seems to me could only have been produced by the action of a cutting

instrument. In some cases the bone has been broken off upon one of the faces of incision, whilst the other is smooth and sharply defined. Judging from woodcuts and casts, it is impossible to avoid admitting that the cuts have been made upon fresh bones. These incisions differ entirely from those found upon the bones of halitherium found in the miocene falunian strata of Pouancé. I have always thought it impossible to attribute the latter to man, as decidedly as I think those which we are now discussing ought to be attributed to his agency. The existence of pliocene man in Tuscany is, then, in my opinion, an acquired scientific fact. Nevertheless, I should admit that this conclusion is not yet unanimously accepted, and that it is disputed by M. Magitot, among others, who relies upon his own experience.

VII. The researches of M. l'Abbé Bourgeois take us still further back. This practised and persevering observer has discovered in the department of Loir-et-Cher, in the Commune of Thénay, flints, the shape of which he thinks can only be attributed to man. Now geologists are unanimous in considering these deposits as miocene, belonging to the mean tertiary age.

But the flints of Thénay, generally of small size, are almost all very roughly shaped, and many palæontologists and archæologists have considered the fractures to be due to nothing more than accidental blows. In 1872, at the Congress of Brussels, the question was submitted to a commission of the most competent men of Germany, England, France, Belgium, and Italy, and the judges disagreed. Some accepted and some rejected all the flints exhibited by M. l'Abbé Bourgeois. Some considered that a small number only could be attributed to human industry. Others, again, thought it right to reserve their judgment and to wait for fresh facts.

I joined the ranks of the latter. But since then fresh specimens discovered by M. l'Abbé Bourgeois have removed my last doubts. A small knife or scraper, among others, which shows a fine regular finish, can, in my opinion, only have been shaped by man. Nevertheless, I do not blame

those of my colleagues who deny or still doubt. In such a matter there is no very great urgency, and doubtless the existence of miocene man will be proved, as that of glacial and pliocene man has been-by facts.

VIII. Thus, man was most certainly in existence during the quaternary epoch and during the transition age to which the gravels of Saint-Prest and the deposits of the Victoria cave belong. He has, in all probability, seen miocene times, and consequently the entire pliocene epoch. Are there any reasons for believing that his traces will be found further back still? Is the date of his appearance necessarily connected with any epoch? For an answer to these questions I only see a single order of facts to which we can apply.

We know that, as far as his body is concerned, man is a mammal, and nothing more. The conditions of existence which are sufficient for these animals ought to have been sufficient for him also; where they lived, he could live. He may then have been contemporaneous with the earliest mammalia, and go back as far as the secondary period.

Palæontologists of high merit shrink from this proposition. They do not admit even the possibility of the existence of man in miocene times. All the mammalian fauna of this period have, they say, disappeared; how should man alone have resisted against causes which were sufficiently powerful to cause a complete renewal of all the beings with which he was most nearly connected?

I recognise the force of the objection; but I also take into account human intelligence, which they seem to forget. It is evidently owing to this intelligence that the man of SaintPrest, of the Victoria cave, and of Monte Aperto has been able to survive two great geological epochs. He protected himself against cold by fire, and so survived till the return of a more genial temperature. Is it not possible, therefore, to imagine that man of an earlier period should have found in his industry the necessary resources for struggling against the conditions which the transition from the later

secondary times to the earlier tertiary must have imposed upon him.

In fact, the most careful judges acknowledge that man has seen the accomplishments of one of the great changes on the surface of the globe. He has lived in one of the geological epochs to which he was but lately thought to be a complete stranger; he has been contemporary with species of mammalia which have not even seen the commencement of the present epoch. There is then nothing impossible in the idea that he should have survived other species of the same class, or have witnessed other geological revolutions, or have appeared upon the globe with the first representatives of the type to which he belongs by his organisation.

But this is a question to be proved by facts. Before we can even suppose it to be so, we must wait for information from observation.

BOOK IV.

ORIGINAL LOCALISATION OF THE HUMAN SPECIES.

CHAPTER XIV.

AGASSIZ'S THEORY.- -CENTRES OF CREATION.

I. WITH the exception of Australasia, with which we are but very imperfectly acquainted, and of some islands and deserts which we need not take into account, all the regions visited by man since the commencement of the era of modern discoveries have proved to be more or less inhabited. In wandering over the globe of which he took possession, the European has met with man everywhere, and quaternary palæontology reveals him to us upon the most distant shores of the two continents.

Are all these different populations indigenous? Is man a native of the countries where he is represented by history, and where travellers have met with him? or has he rather invaded by degrees the surface of the globe, starting from a certain number of points, or from a single one? In other words, has man, who is now cosmopolitan, originally been more or less localised?

These questions have been answered alternately in the different senses which they admit of Unfortunately these solutions have too often been influenced by considerations entirely foreign to science. It has been thought necessary to adopt either the one or the other in the name of dogma or philosophy, and this question has been confounded with