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kinds of wild fowl, that it still remains to-day what it was at the time of its discovery by the whites, the favorite resort of the fisherman and the hunter. Similar attractions in the Delaware Bay of Fig. 32 must have called to its shores and found occupation upon its waters for a numerous population. It is therefore most natural that the gravels which have buried so much of the shores and the muddy bottom of the earlier and greater Delaware Bay should also contain in vast numbers the rude implements of an unknown race, in view of whose antiquity the mound-builders of the Mississippi basin seem new-comers on our continent.

Beyond question the invaluable discoveries of Dr. Abbott, and the less abundant finds of Miss Babbitt at Little Falls, Minn., of Cresson in Jackson County, Ind., and Newcastle County, Del., and of Dr. Metz at Madisonville, O., establish the existence of man in North America as a contemporary of mammals now extinct and a witness of the retreat of the great ice-sheet, if not even to its invasion and possession of the greater part of the northern continents.

It remains to ascertain to what extent the country was peopled by these paleolithic men, and (if possible) how nearly their physical char

acteristics and their mode of life corresponded with those of races in Europe contemporary with them.

But did men anywhere exist at a period even earlier than the river-drift? Did man first appear at some time during the age of mammals?

This question can only be answered within the limits of the present chapter by giving conclusions, without going into details as regards the evidence from which those conclusions are drawn. Mr. Dawkins does not admit that there is evidence of the existence of men earlier than the river-drift, but would rather suppose that certain chipped flint implements, found in Portugal and elsewhere, which undoubtedly date back to the mammalian age, are the work of some one of the higher apes, than that they were fashioned by the hand of man.

On the other hand, the Abbé Bourgeois, Dr. Hamy, and M. de Quatrefages, Worsaae, Capellini, Delaunay, Ribeiro, M. de Mortillet, Professor Huxley, James Geikie, and Lubbock find the evidence sufficient to warrant the belief that man originated during the tertiary age, perhaps at its very beginning.

How widely man has ranged over the earth's surface during prehistoric times may be even

further demonstrated by future researches; but it is already clear that he occupied, in glacial and post-glacial times, not only Europe, including the British Isles and the islands of the Mediterranean, but also Egypt and North and South America. The number and some of the distinctive characteristics of the later prehistoric races of Europe have been pretty clearly made out. In tabular form the classification of Quatrefages and Hamy would be as follows:

DIVISION I.
Long-headed Races.

DIVISION II.
Short-headed Races.

1. Canstadt race.
2. Cro-Magnon race.

3.

4.

Races of Furfooz.

5. Race of Grenelle.
6. Race of La Truchère.

By long-headed races those are meant in which the distance from front to back of the skull is comparatively great; while in shortheaded races this dimension bears a much less proportion to the distance from side to side of the head. The Australian natives have heads of the former type; the Cossacks, of the latter. Names have been assigned to the races, as above classified, from European localities where their remains have been obtained. According to the authors of this classification, these races all lived subsequent to the age of mammals,1 in

1 Nothing exact is known in regard to the characteristics of the men of the mammalian age, since only a few implements have as yet been found to represent them.

[graphic]

FIG. 33.-The Neanderthal Skull. A. Side View. B. Front View. C. Top View.

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B

the order given; the Canstadt race being the oldest. Of the characteristics of the later races there is no need here to speak.

The Canstadt race, however, takes us so much farther back toward the origin of the human species, that a few words in regard to it may well be given. Even the most thorough-going opponents of the theory of descent are forced to admit, with Quatrefages, that there is an immense step downwards from later human races to this early one. Professor Huxley, on seeing a cast of the Neanderthal skull,1 at once pronounced it to be the most ape-like he had ever beheld.

Says the distinguished anthropologist, Professor Schaafhausen, of this skull,

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"No other human skull presents so utterly bestial a type as the Neanderthal fragment. If one cuts a female gorilla skull in the same fashion, the resemblance is truly astonishing, and we may say that the only human feature in the skull is its size."2

The following diagram, Fig. 34, serves well to illustrate the general outline of the Neanderthal skull, and the fact that its form is intermediate between the ape on the one hand and the higher

1 A famous skull of this type found near Düsseldorf, Prussia. 2 Quoted by Grant Allen, in an article in the Popular Science Monthly, November, 1882.

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