from lower and earlier varieties that have long since become extinct. What the form and features, what the intellectual capacity and capabilities of such extinct races, we have no knowledge, and may never have; but clearly all analogy favours the inference that the difference between them and the lowest form of Negro may have been as great or even greater than that which exists, physically and intellectually, between the highest European and the lowest Ethiopian. Of these extinct varieties ethnology gives no information; and for all that preceded the existing order of things we must appeal, as will be done in a subsequent section, to geology, and the appointed order of creational development as revealed by paleontology.

FUNCTIONAL RELATIONS.

Physical and Mental Functions in common with other Animals -Man Improvable and Progressive-Influence and Results of this Progression-Man a Modifier of Nature-Spread and Ascension of the Higher, and Decline and Extinction of the Lower Varieties-Our Fourth Proposition.

IN virtue of his animal nature, geographical position, and racial differences, man, like other creatures, has certain functions or duties which he is necessitated to perform. Like other animals, he must procure food and shelter, and this duty will be less or more arduous according to his situation on the earth's surface. He must also protect himself from the attacks of other animals, and especially from those of his own kind; and this he will be enabled to do in proportion to his superior strength and skill and the nature of the position he occupies. But while in virtue of his animal nature he must perform these functions in common with other creatures, there are other duties arising from his superior organisation and intellectual endowments which are peculiar to himself, and which he alone is destined to perform.

Walking erect, capable of turning readily to all sides, possessed of those wonderful instruments the arm and hand, and gifted with a mind to direct their operations, in functional performance he immeasurably excels all other animals. As a tool and implementmaker he acquires new power over the opposing forces of nature; and as a fire-kindler and machine-inventor he increases that power ten-thousand-fold. But man is not merely a fabricator of mechanical tools, he is also an inventor of intellectual tools-of political, social, moral, and religious schemes, by which he at once promotes his own comfort and secures the improvement of his successors. Endowed with the gift of language, and capable of recording his experiences, generation after generation he advances in knowledge, and thus, unlike other animals, he is improvable and progressive-improvable in the individual and progressive in the race. The most highly endowed and docile of the lower animals remain now as they ever were; the lowest of the human race is always capable of some improvement. The range of the former is fixed and limited, that of the latter seems illimitable. It is this improvable intellect in man that enables him to subjugate and adapt the forces of naturewinds, currents, heat, light, electricity, and the like ; and just in proportion to this subjugation and adaptation does mankind ascend in the scale of

civilisation.

Where man cannot subdue the forces of nature, they dominate over him; and just in proportion to this victory, so will ever be his material and intellectual advancement.

aid

Already man has investigated and turned to his

many of the forces of nature, reduced the metallic ores, and constructed machinery of marvellous capabilities; and as he advances we may fairly believe there is no natural force, however subtle or however powerful, that is not destined to come under his mastery and adaptation. It is this power of adaptation that marks in an especial manner the progressive from the declining races of mankind; and we may safely hold it as a matter of faith, that according to the possession of this power are certain races destined to advance, and others as certainly doomed to extinction. In virtue of his civilisation man extirpates, disseminates, and cultivates plant-life; extirpates, disseminates, and domesticates animal-life; and extirpates or civilises his fellow-men. In his spread over the earth, and as population increases, man must necessarily raise an increased supply of food by artificial means, and thus he cultivates some plants and extirpates others. He also transfers the plants of one region to another, and thus becomes the instrument of new distributions and arrangements. The lower animals may occasionally do the same, and on

a limited scale, but this unintentionally; whereas with man it is the work of design, and ever increasing with his requirements. In like manner he extirpates, disseminates, and domesticates animals, destroying those that are noxious and hostile, carrying from one region to another those that are useful (and occasionally by accident some that are injurious), and domesticating and increasing in a wonderful manner those on whom he relies for his food, clothing, and assistance in his daily labours. Indeed, wherever man settles down he becomes a modifier of nature, and as one portion of nature is intimately associated with every other portion, so every modification ramifies and extends far beyond the circle of direct interference. The felling of forests and the drainage of land, for example, affect climate, and with the slightest change in climate arises a whole round of alteration in plants, and consequently also in the animals that subsist upon them. The extirpation of certain plants may lead to the destruction or removal of certain animals, and with the destruction of these animals others may so increase as to effect the destruction of a second set of plants, thus involving the extinction or removal of a third set of animals, and so on through interminable ramifications. In this way man has materially interfered with the distribution of plants and animals, and this more especially since the white man of Europe