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Show 4_()4: TilE ?tfONOGENlSTS AND visited by Mr. Gulliver, in his "Voyage to the IIouyhnhnms"); where our naturalist's informants had also beheld '1 wild camels." The latter, senior amonO' "MM. los Membres do l'InsLiiuL," as well as free fwm any sins but Sinology, happening to meet in Paris with a negro of singulat· conformation, compares him with perfectly authentic block-printed plates of ancient foreign nations in Mongoli£t, known to Chinese cncycloprodists before an Encyclopredia, or even a geogra.- 1 hical dictionary, had been struck off in Emope. A copy of this work, the Sau '1.1sai Too Ilwyy, is in the possession of my valued colleague M. Pauthicr, the historian of China; with whom I have enjoyed a laugh over its numerous designs of rnen witlt tails, while he read me the Lcxt; which, being in Chinese idcographics, docs not strictly fall within Voltaire's malicious definition-" Los dictionnaircs gcographiqucs no sont qnc des cn·curs par orili·e alpbab6iiquc." Mr. Birch was so kin l, sub ·cqnonLly, as to show me another copy in the library of tho British Muscum.188 For the second proposition, viz : that, in palroontology, monkeys appear to be the forerunners of man, a more serious tone of analysis must be adopted. We have seen how Cuvicr, at his demise in 1832, did not anticipate tho discovery, made uvc years later, of fossil monkeys; which has since established, in sev ral gradations of genera and of epoch, a link between extinct q1~ad?'umanes and living birnanes. Inasmuch as that groat Naturalist, correct in his deductions from the data known to him, committed an error, as it turned out afterwards, about fossil 188 This is one of tho Sinio authorities (n.s quoted, that is, by D1·: OuiON}:s) just rcfencd to by nn eloquent divine, !It Jlopo Chapel, New York, in his 2d lecture on" Tho EUmology of Americ~," wherein he proves that out· American Indians n.ro only a colony, " <160 and 500" A.D., of fitndostanio Budhists, since run wild! (New Yorlc Herald, Feb. 6, 1867.) , In order to remove n.t once n.ny ln.tcnt suspicion that, n.t the present day, ct·udition is necessary to know every pieco of nonsense that has been written on tlie nnto-Colmnbinn oolonizn.tion o~ Americn from ~ny part of tho world-Chinoso, 'l'nrtnr, Jnpnncso, Isrnelitieh, Norwcgtan, Irtsb, W~l.sh, Oauhsh, Ilispnnio.n, l'olish, Polyncsit1n, Phoonician, Al!11nntic, &c., &c.-lot mo refer crtttcs, who 1111\Y be ncquniuled only with French, to "Uecbcrchos snr lo~ Antiquit6s de l'A~6riquo du Nord ot do !'Amerique du Sud, ct 8ur In population primitive do ~cs d~ux contmcnts, pnr M. D. 13. W AUDilN," formerly the vory lcttrncd U. S. Consul nt l'n.ns,-:-m the folio AntiquiM8 illexicaines (soc Pnlszky's Chnp. II, p.183, ante). Humboldt hnd wrll~on long provionsly- "It cannot bo doubted, lbnt tho grentor pnrt of the nntionH of Amcr1cn bolon_g to n rnco of mon, who, isolatod over since tho infttnoy of tho worh.l from tho rest of mnnkmd [and how, during such infttncy, could tho fttthors of Amor·icnn Indinns ~ome hero from Mount Arnrnt ?), exhibit, in tho nnturo.l diversity of lungungc in their tontm·o~, 1\nd the conformation of their skull, incontestable proofs of n n onrly n111l 'complete eopnrnll~n . " (Reuarchc~ concerning lite ln~lilutions a11d .t!fonument8 of tile ancimt Inliabitanl8 ;: 0 Amenca, London, ~814, I, PP· 24.!l-5?.) Through tho 3d Lecture (New York Herald, b: 9, .1~57), I perceiVe how, even n.t th1s dnte, it is not yet known, iu Now York, thnt tho 00~1 ~n,ltllcs !\bout tho god "Votn,n" alias "llnllttm," nrc merely tho pious inventions of nn tlltlernto Jesuit priest! On whom hcroal'tcr. · TilE POLYGENISTS 46!) monkeys, may he not have also made another in regard to fossil man? Ilia convictions were: te<J "There is not either any man [among these fossil-bones]: all tho bones of onr species that have boon collected with those of which we have spoken found themselves therein accidentally, and their number is morcovct· excccdi ngly small; which would not assuredly have been the case if men had made establishments in the countries inhabited by these animals. Where then at that time was mankind?" We cannot answer decisively, as yet--" with those monkeys, to be sure, whose fossil and humatilo remains, unrcvcalcd to Cuvicr, have been since discovered;" but this much we can do,-show that while, on the one hand, later researches have vastly extended Cuvicr's narrow estimate of the antiquity of mankind upon earth; on the other, the gradations of epoch and of species, from the tertiary deposits where fossil simire aro found in Europe, UJ wards to recent formations in which, according to a preceding remark of Marcel de Serres, those humatile monkeys have turned up in America, thoro is a gradual progression of" sp cics" that brings these last nearly to specific identity with some of those simiaJ platyrhinre living in Brazilian forests at the present day. We can do more. After obtaining an almost unbroken chain of osteological samples, from living species of callit!L?·ix and pithecus in South Amc1·ica, back to Lund's callith1·ix primcevus and p1·otopitldcus of humatilc Brazilian deposits, and thence upwards through the various cxtiuct gcn ra of simice catardtince found in a true fossil state in Europe and liindostan; we arc enabled, upon tuming round and looking at the ascending scale of relative antiqnity in human remains, -from tho Egyptian pyramid to tho Belgian and Austrian bonecaverns, ft'om Scandinavian and Celtic barrows to the vestiges of man's industry extant in French diluvial drift, and from the old Caribrean scmi-.fossilizcd skeletons of G uada loupc, coupled with the Brazilian semi-fossilized crania (LuNo) 1011 as well as with tho semifossilized human jaws of Florida (AaAssnr., in "Types "),-to establish, for man's antiquity, two points, parallel in some degree with what has been done for that of the simiaJ, viz: 1st, That tho existence of manHnd on earth is cal'l'ied back at least to the humatile stage of oHsoous autiquily on both old and new contincntR; and 2d, that, by strange and ignificant coincidence, like the genera callithrix and pitltecus, the living species and the dead, in Mon1 cys, all humati le spccimcus of Man in America correspond, in ?'ace, with the same 189 Discours su1· lcs IUvolutions, pp. 361-2, nnd 131-!l. roo "Notice sur lc~ osscmonts humnines fossiles, trom·6s dnns uno C1lvcruo du Ur6sil "Bulletin de Ia Soc. /l , des Antiquairet du N01·d, 1845-!l, pp. 4!)-i7. 30 |