s to have
been analogous to that which now peoples the arctic, temperate, and
tropical regions contemporaneously with distinct assemblages of species
and genera, or which, independently of mere temperature, gives rise to a
predominance of the marsupial or didelphous tribe of quadrupeds in
Australia, of the placental or monodelphous tribe in Asia and Europe, or
which causes a profusion of reptiles without mammalia in the Galapagos
Archipelago, and of mammalia without reptiles in Greenland.

_Recent origin of man._--If, then, the popular theory of the successive
development of the animal and vegetable world, from the simplest to the
most perfect forms, rests on a very insecure foundation; it may be
asked, whether the recent origin of man lends any support to the same
doctrine, or how far the influence of man may be considered as such a
deviation from the analogy of the order of things previously
established, as to weaken our confidence in the uniformity of the course
of nature.

Antecedently to investigation, we might reasonably have anticipated that
the vestiges of man would have been traced back at least as far as those
modern strata in which all the testacea and a certain number of the
mammalia are of existing species, for of all the mammalia the human
species is the most cosmopolite, and perhaps more capable than any other
of surviving considerable vicissitudes in climate, and in the physical
geography of the globe.

No inhabitant of the land exposes himself to so many dangers on the
waters as man, whether in a savage or a civilized state;[228] and there
is no animal, therefore, whose skeleton is so liable to become imbedded
in lacustrine or submarine deposits; nor can it be said that his remains
are more perishable than those of other animals; for in ancient fields
of battle, as Cuvier has observed, the bones of men have suffered as
little decomposition as those of horses which were buried in the same
grave.[229] But even if the more solid parts of our species had
disappeared, the impression of their form would have remained engraven
on the rocks, as have the traces of the tenderest leaves of plants, and
the soft integuments of many animals. Works of art, moreover, composed
of the most indestructible materials, would have outlasted almost all
the organic contents of sedimentary rocks. Edifices, and even entire
cities, have, within the times of history, been buried under volcanic
ejections, submerged beneath the se