aspect; the body harmonized with the head; the height was not more than
five feet and a half; yet the bones are very thick in proportion
to their length, and were evidently supplied with a powerful set of
muscles, since the little protuberances and depressions where the
muscles are attached are remarkably well developed.<46> Huxley and
Quatrefages have both pointed out that representatives of this race are
to be found among some Australian tribes. "Among the races of this
great island there is one, distributed particularly in the province of
Victoria, in the neighborhood of Port Western, which reproduces in a
remarkable manner, the characters of the Canstadt race."<47> Not the
least interesting result of this discovery is the similarity of weapons
and implements. "With Mr. Lartet, we see in the obsidian lances of
New Caledonia the flint heads of the lower alluvium of the Somme. The
hatchet of certain Australians reminds us, as it did Sir Charles Lyell,
of the Abbeville hatchet."<48>

Yet some hesitate about accepting these interesting inferences, thinking
that the portions of the human skeleton thus far recovered, which are
beyond a doubt referable to this period, are too fragmentary to base
such important conclusions upon. This is the view of Boyd Dawkins,
who thinks "we can not refer them to any branch of the human race now
alive."<49> "We are without a clew," continues he, "to the ethnology of
the River Drift man, who most probably is as completely extinct as
the woolly rhinoceros or the cave bear."<50> Future discoveries will
probably settle this point.

It is yet a much disputed point to what particular portion of the
Glacial Age we can trace the appearance of man. We can profitably note
the tendency of scientific thought in this direction. But a short
time has elapsed since a few scholars here and there began to urge an
antiquity for man extending back beyond the commonly accepted period of
six thousand years. Though it is now well known and admitted that there
are no good grounds for this estimate, yet such was its hold, such its
sway over scientific as well as popular thought, that an appeal to this
chronology was deemed sufficient answer to the discoveries of DePerthes,
Schmerling, and others. It was but yesterday that this popular belief
was overthrown and due weight given the discoveries of careful explorers
in many branches, and the antiquity of man referred, on indisputable
grounds, to a point of time at