hey have the support
of such high authorities as Sir J. Prestwich, Sir E. Ray Lankester, Lord
Avebury, Dr. Keane, Dr. Blackmore, Professor Schwartz, etc., they are
one of those controverted testimonies on which it would be ill-advised
to rely in such a work as this.

We must say, then, that we have no undisputed traces of man in the
Tertiary Era. The Tertiary implements which have been at various times
claimed in France, Italy, and Portugal are equally disputed; the remains
which were some years ago claimed as Tertiary in the United States are
generally disallowed; and the recent claims from South America are under
discussion. Yet it is the general feeling of anthropologists that man
was evolved in the Tertiary Era. On the one hand, the anthropoid apes
were highly developed by the Miocene period, and it would be almost
incredible that the future human stock should linger hundreds of
thousands of years behind them. On the other hand, when we find the
first traces of man in the Pleistocene, this development has already
proceeded so far that its earlier phase evidently goes back into the
Tertiary. Let us pass beyond the Tertiary Era for a moment, and examine
the earliest and most primitive remains we have of human or semi-human
beings.

The first appearance of man in the chronicle of terrestrial life is a
matter of great importance and interest. Even the least scientific of
readers stands, so to say, on tiptoe to catch a first glimpse of
the earliest known representative of our race, and half a century of
discussion of evolution has engendered a very wide interest in the early
history of man. [*]

* A personal experience may not be without interest in this
connection. Among the many inquiries directed to me in
regard to evolution I received, in one month, a letter from
a negro in British Guiana and an extremely sensible query
from an inmate of an English asylum for the insane! The
problem that beset the latter of the two was whether the
Lemuranda preceded the Lemurogona in Eocene times. He had
found a contradiction in the statements of two scientific
writers.

Fortunately, although these patriarchal bones are very scanty--two
teeth, a thigh-bone, and the skull-cap--we are now in a position to form
some idea of the nature of their living owner. They have been subjected
to so searching a scrutiny and discussion since they were found in
Java in 1891 and 1892 that there is n