e the beginning of historical times.

The presence there of remains of animals which ages ago perished from
the earth is another circumstance indicative of high antiquity. These
embrace the mammoth,--the great hairy elephant of prehistoric times,--an
extinct hair-clad rhinoceros, the large and powerful cave-bear and
cave-lion, the great Irish elk, and still other animals of whose
existence we know only by their bones. Others, which existed in common
with men of later date, are the reindeer and the musk-ox, species of
which now inhabit the coldest regions of the north, and whose presence
in southern Europe at that era seems to indicate a much colder climate
than that of historic times.

The evidences of human antiquity here briefly presented are accompanied
by indications of a gradual development of the human intellect. If man
has "fallen from his high estate," he has left no traces of this high
estate on his downward path. We possess abundant indications of his
upward climb, we find none of a preceding descent. If we base our
opinions on known facts, the theory of development is the only one that
can be sustained; the doctrine of a fall is absolutely without warrant
outside the pages of Genesis.

The successive stages of man's mental development, as indicated in the
work of his hands, are well and clearly marked. At the lowest level we
find tools and weapons of the palaeolithic or old stone age, made of
roughly chipped stone, rude in form, and never ground or polished. These
present some evidence of gradual improvement, but we must go to a
higher level to find implements of a decidedly higher order, the neatly
shaped and polished stone implements of the neolithic or new stone age.
With the coming of these appears a much greater diversity in tools and
weapons, and evidences of a growing skill in manufacture and a
considerably greater power of invention. Still higher lie the deposits
of the bronze age, in which metal replaces stone in human implements.
Finally appears the age of iron, that in which we still remain. We need
merely refer in passing to the lake-dwellings of Switzerland, with their
many interesting relics of man during the later stone, the bronze, and
the early iron eras; and the kitchen-middens, or refuse-heaps, of the
Danish islands and elsewhere, which extend from the old stone age far
down toward the historic period.

These are but a portion of the evidences of man's antiquity and his
gradual progress