merest savage can and does arrive at that knowledge which the profoundest anatomist in the world could not acquire by the minutest inquiry into the internal structure. Since the time of Cuvier many other facts have been shown, all tending to the same conclusion. The result was this: the bones of an animal, strongly resembling the existing horse, being found in an ancient fossiliferous stratum of the earth, how was the zoologist to arrive at a true inference in respect of these bones? The exterior, the all-important character in zooclassic was gone, and lost for ever; the skeleton, partial or complete, remai: is it identical, and of the same species as the now existing horse? I lean to the opinion that under such circumstances it was specifically distinct, and belonged to an extinct epoch of living forms; and if so, the coincidence of human bones being found with these implies an inconceivable antiquity of man. On the other hand, all doubt is removed, when by the side of the remains of these doubtful species other vestiges are found, of animals of unquestionable extinct epochs. The specimen, then, in question, was either of the same species as the existing horse, and if so, the present living world intercalated with the past, or if different and distinct, it implied that no dependence could be placed on the anatomical test in paleontology, in so far at least as regarded closely resembling species. For want of correct ideas or of language, or both, we speak of fossil tigers, bears, lions, panthers, as if there ever were such animals, properly so called. They were carnivorous animals; that is all that we know for certain; but as to their resembling the present races of these animals, there are no grounds for such a belief. Thus the whole theory of the restoration of the extinct animal world has always appeared to me to be a delusion, ending in the production of such monsters as we see imitated at the so-called Crystal Palace-monsters, such as never were, and probably never will be found on the earth. Cuvier was very cautious in his outlines of the restoration of the extinct, conscious that by the loss of the external characters all hopes of a correct restoration were frustrated.

As regards man, the question assumes a more important, I had almost said a more serious, aspect. To the various races of men now met with on the earth, the illustrious Blumenbach gave the name of varieties, probably he thought that they are not distinct species, but merely accidental varieties of one species; and this is the view most generally adopted. As there is nothing accidental strictly in this world, these varieties must have a producing cause, and that cause must be physical. Nothing metaphysical can exist, and it is an out

rage on common sense to give the nonentity a corporeal existence. The varieties of the race or races of men differ more from each other than the horse from the ass; the ass from the zebra, the zebra from the quagga, both internally and externally; yet it has never been maintained that these distinct species of the genus horse all sprung from a common parent. If the theory is to be applied to man, it ought to be shown, first, why it does not apply to the horse; and, secondly, how it happens that man, who boasts of the means which his intelligence devises to enable him to resist all climates, should yet be the animal who seems most of all under the influence of the external media in which he lives. Thirdly. How is it that in tracing backwards in line the pictorial history of man we find that at no period of his history were the races different from what they are now, physically at least? As "tout le morale est dans la physique," I feel assured that morally, as well as physically, man is much the same now as he has ever been. In what follows I shall not fail to consider carefully this part of the question.

2. Hippocrates, the father of medicine, held the opinion that the races of men are merely varieties of one species, and that these varieties result from the varying circumstances in which man may be placed. He supported his ingenious and plausible theory by all the knowledge he possessed of the inhabitants of the earth known to him; for be it observed that this amounted to very little. In his celebrated work, De Aëre, Aquis, et Locis, he propounded the whole theory of external influenees over man, a theory which is much in vogue to this day. It relieves the hesitating and the impatient of many difficulties; has a quasi-philosophic look; has plausibility on its side, and man's superficial observations to support it. But, like Egyptian history, in solving one enigma it unfortunately raises many new ones; and the pleasure derived from perusing the work of Hippocrates and the modern expositors of his views, is a good deal marred by reflecting that the whole theory is antagonistic to historical truth, to physiological observation, to the experience of the present and the past.

The views expounded by Hippocrates seem to have been the same as those of his predecessors. Thus Herodotus asserts that the Persian skulls in his day were soft, and the Egyptian hard; and he assigns a reason for a phenomenon which had no existence.

Men differ more in their intelligence than in their physique; to prove this we have only to look at France, Spain, Poland, Russia, and Turkey. Observe the intense Catholicity of the Celtic, Lusitanian, and Italian races; the stubborn Protestantism of the Scandinavian VOL. I.-NO. II.

and German; the different basis on which they place their belief— the one on faith, the other on reason. Lastly, look at their literature, that ultimate test of all civilization, and of the view they take of art, and you will speedily perceive that it is in the nature of the race, and not in any surface varnish a nation may have accidentally acquired, that the different views men take of the external world are to be traced and defined. These intellectual qualities are equally fixed, permanent, and unalterable, and are much more important than the physical characters of the race.

PART II. That some races that once existed have now perished, or nearly so, is by no means improbable. The prime cause of their extinction may have been the destruction of the land of their origin, the centre or focus of their original formation. This theory, I applied to the Phenician race, and to the Basques, which still exist; to the Caribs, and to the progenitors of the Aztecs, whose focus of origin is probably now at the bottom of the Pacific. Their escape to another continent would not necessarily save the race from final extinction. If the cradle, for example, of the Scandinavian race were to disappear beneath the ocean, their colonies might be found unequal to the support of the race through many centuries in the land of their adoption, and thus the whole race might in time disappear.

The scientific man endeavours to ascertain the antiquity of man1. By historic documents and monumental or other remains of human industry; 2nd. The more indirect manner by efforts to identify his remains with those of animals which have all perished and are therefore presumed to belong to a previous geological period.

Since we cannot discover the producing cause of race, let us trace man backwards in time in order to ascertain-1. If men have always been of the races we now see; 2. If any ancient races have become extinct, or any new ones appeared; 3. Endeavour to ascertain the antiquity of man on the earth.

1. By the discovery of the fossil remains, the immortal Cuvier gave human kind a new reading of living nature: he explained to the world the signification of these remains. The result of these greatest of all discoveries ever made by man were-1. A refutation of the Hebrew cosmogony; 2. A demonstration of the antiquity of life on the globe, and proofs irrefutable that living animals had changed their forms at certain periods of the world's career. To these periods he gave the name of geological epochs, when new forms of life appeared on the globe, and the older forms became extinct. The present order of

Mr. Hunter and the Royal Society.

things he thought was comparatively recent; in this epoch, he of course included man. But by pointing out distinctly that man had not been found in any fossiliferous stratum of the globe, his appearance on earth might be quite recent. He avoided all other questions respecting man, his races, his qualities, physical and moral. The fact of man not being found in a fossiliferous state was dexterously seized on by the able Freycinous and the theological world generally, and Cuvier and orthodoxy were easily reconciled. Although his discoveries refuted the Hebrew cosmogony, it did not affect the chronology. The six days were declared to be vast periods in time; what the theologian made of the seventh day, whether a day or a period, I neither know nor care to know. Thus he drew a distinct line between the living and the extinct, the present and the past; his theory of species was disputed by De Blainville; it was denied on philosophic grounds by Goethe and the German school, followed by Geoffroy (St. Hilaire) and others; the English, as usual, came last.* But long before Cuvier's death, geologists had shewn that the distinction he had drawn between the present organic world, including man, and the past, in which it was supposed that man was not present, or to use a theological term, had not been created, was untenable.

More than thirty years ago, M. Knot, in his Suites de Buffon,† wrote as follows, and as his works are well known, as they comprise the labours of many distinguished geologists, I feel surprised at some English naturalists affecting unacquaintance with them, and relating M. Knot's remarks as if they were new and of English growth.

66

Spallanzani, a distinguished observer of the last century, announced the presence of human bones in strata of vast antiquity. The fact was denied by Cuvier, but has since been distinctly proved. Donati, on the coast of Dalmatia, has done the same. The appearances were re-examined by Germar, who, besides human bones, found portions of pottery." Baron Schönlein, M. Schouter, and Count Sternberg, near Köstritz, made similar observations. Count Razomousky was equally successful near Baden. In the Grand Duchy of Austria, Count Briuna, near Kremz, discovered crania of extraordinary shape, supposed at first to come from the ancient burial places of the Avars, but proved afterwards to have no relation to that people. M. Boué, behind Lahr in the Grand Duchy of Baden, in 1823, made similar discoveries as to the juxtaposition of human bones with the remains

The author of the Vestiges of Creation; Messrs. Darwin, Huxley, etc. It was a mistaken idea that any one could continue Buffon; no one could write like Buffon.

of the fossil extinct animals; he showed them to M. Cuvier, who objected to the authenticity of the facts. M. Boué gave way at the time, in presence of the first anatomist and palæontologist in the world, but he revisited the spot in 1829, and verified all the facts. The bones were found in a locality from thirty to fifty feet above the waters of the Schutten.

To these facts have been added other discoveries lately made on the soil of France, and respecting which the Academy of Sciences remained dumb. We allude to the human bones found in the caverns of Beze, of Pondres, of Souvignerques, of Darfort, and Nabigra, to which must be added numerous discoveries of the same kind made by M. Schmerling in various caverns of the province of Liège.

It is to be remarked that the human bones of various localities cited above belong generally to races differing completely from those which live at present in Europe. Thus, the heads found in the sands of Baden near Vienna, resemble in form the African Negro races; those of the borders of the Rhone and of the Danube, offer strong resemblance to the heads of Caraibs, and to those of the ancient inhabitants of Chili and Peru, and were supposed to have belonged to Aztecs imported into Europe by Cortez. To all these facts, which in our opinion merit attention, and encourage the inquiries of geologists, may be added others which no longer permit us to doubt that man was the cotemporary of the last cataclysms, which have ravaged the surface of the globe, and which have accumulated on a number of points animals which still exist, with others which no longer live in the same countries, or which even belong to lost species. (Geologie, Knot, p. 430, vol. i, Paris, 1837.)

M. Knot adds: It is, then, only by the aid of doubts more or less specious, more or less ingenious, that one can attribute these human bones to deposits posterior to the historic times. Thus was the gauntlet thrown down to the theologists so early as 1837, and the parade of repeating* it without any new facts in 1862, was unnecessary and uncalled for. The peat bogs of Denmark have been referred to as affording proofs of the unfathomable antiquity of man, but the crania discovered at Engis and Neanderthal were not found in these peat bogs, which underlie the ancient extinct forests.

The oldest forest now overthrown was of pine trees; next came oaks, birch, beech, which now cover Denmark. In the beech forests only we found the traces of the men of iron; amongst the oaks, only he men of bronze; amongst the pines, only the men who worked in stone (flint-headed arrows, hatchets, etc.); beneath the peat we

Lecture at the Royal Institution in 1862.