well as in Africa; and even were such traces discovered, we are not to believe that the lowest existing variety may not have been preceded in later-tertiary times by others still more lowly both in physical and mental endowments.

We are aware that it is argued by some, apparently little acquainted with the physical relations of life, that it is only under the existing conditions of the globe that mankind could have subsisted, and that all the preceding geological epochs were spent, as it were, in the "preparation of the earth for the reception of the human race." It is true that all we know of the present, as well as all that geology has told us of the past, leads to the belief that life is adapted to the conditions by which it is surrounded, and further, that in the ascent of plant-life and animallife which paleontology has revealed, there is also a mutual co-adaptation of living forms; but seeing the vast range of conditions-polar, temperate, and tropical-under which man now exists, and the extreme variety of substances on which he can subsist, and that often exclusively, there is no reason why rude races (like the Esquimaux) may not have lived on seals and fishes during the later stages of the glacial period, or even (like the South Sea Islanders) on the palm fruits of the tertiary epoch. This argument of the "preparation of the earth for man," so often

appealed to by sciolists in support of the recentness of the human race, must be extended to much wider limits than is generally supposed; and even were we to restrict it to post-tertiary times, these times have witnessed so many changes that thousands of centuries must have already passed in their fulfilment.

Honestly and unreservedly, the whole spirit and tendency of the geological argument is in favour of a high antiquity to the human race-inexpressible in years and centuries, and only to be estimated relatively to other physical occurrences. It is of no avail to appeal to the unequal operation of physical forces in time past, to cataclysms, and other similar uncertainties. The slow formation of deposits in which relics of human art have been found, the character of the contemporaneous animals, the changes in climate which these animal remains imply, and the altered distributions of sea and land which must have given rise to these climatic changes, all point unmistakably to an inconceivable lapse of time. To shut our eyes against these facts, or to attempt to explain them away in favour of any preconceived opinions as to the antiquity of man, would be to discard the clearest deductions of reason, and wilfully and untruthfully to resist conviction.

Our sixth proposition, therefore, is that there is

ample geological evidence of man's having been an inhabitant of Western Europe for a period vastly exceeding that of the ordinarily-accepted chronology. As all historical, traditional, and ethnological testimony points to the descent of the men of Europe from more Oriental stocks, so the fair presumption is, that the human race existed in Asia and in Northern Africa for ages anterior to its appearance in the caves and river-valleys of France and Belgium. It is true we have as yet no evidence of the ethnology of the cavern-dwellers and flint-workers of Western Europe: if they were of Mongolian origin (as some are disposed to think) it would not lessen their antiquity, and if they were of Caucasian descent it would vastly increase it, seeing that this brings into play the argument of ascensive development, of which the lower must precede the higher-the Mongol the Caucasian, and the Negro the Mongol,—thus carrying back the antiquity of mankind immeasurable ages before his appearance either on the platform of South-western Asia or on that of Southern Europe.

GENETIC RELATIONS.

Order and Succession of Life in Time-Hypothesis of Developmental or Derivative Descent: its Proofs and Probabilities; as applicable to the Human Race; not necessarily Degrading; manner in which it should be received-Our Seventh Proposition.

HIGH as we may carry the antiquity of man, far back as we may trace his lowly beginnings, there still lies beyond this the question of his origin-the inquiry how, or by what process, he came into being? If it be difficult to arrive at some intelligible notion of his antiquity, much more must it be to penetrate to his origin. The glimmer which science is yet enabled to throw on this subject may be dim and uncertain, still, if it can lead to some indication, it is something gained-something for the reason to follow -till, under the broader light of increasing know ledge, it arrive at a satisfactory conclusion. It is in vain to discourage the inquiry or point to the hopelessness of its results. Man, in every stage of his existence-savage or civilised-has turned to the question, and, according to the amount of his knowledge,

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has invented theories and offered opinions. Whence are we? is a question that has occurred alike to the untutored savage and the learned philosopher. The African Negro believes that his race must have had a first mother; the Red Indians that they came from the rising sun," or east, meaning they were the adopted children of some divine personage who emanated from thence. The Thibetians believe that mankind descended from the ape; and in Borneo the myth is that man was created from the dust of the earth, and that woman was formed from the great toe of the man. The Pelasgians and Greeks believed themselves to have sprung from the ground, a belief participated in by other Eastern nations, and largely underlying the whole of the earlier and Oriental cosmogonies. In the Phoenician cosmogony, chaos is transformed into order or cosmos by thunder and lightning, and man is awakened from the earth by the rattle of the primal thunders; in the Chaldæan, Belus cuts off his own head, but the gods mingle the blood which flows with the dust of the earth, and out of this red earth man is formed, and from this origin is rational and participates in the divine reason. According to the second version of the Hebrew Genesis, Adam, the man (by some commentators said to signify "red earth"), is formed out of the dust of the ground, and Eve, the woman, is fashioned from a rib taken out of