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Show 522 TilE MONOGENISTS AND great Glacial epoch. Tho characteristic and all the universally distributed plants and animals of these islands, belong to the Central Eu1·opean fauna and flora, or great Germanic type. But in add~ Lion to this, tho prevailing, it is shown that there arc the remains of no fewer than four other floras occupyiug more or less limited areas in Britain, and each having its specific con tre in some part of tho continent of Europe. Three of these belong to more southern, tho fourth to a more northern latitude or isothcrme. The most ancient of our floras, Professor Forbes considers to be only peculiar to the west and south-west of Ireland, and which is shown to be identical with that of the north of Spain; a geological union· or close approximation with which country seems to be tho only method of explaining the presence of so characteristic a flora, inc] uding the hardier Saxifrages and Heaths of the Astul'ias, and such plants as A1·abis ciliata, Pinguicula grandiflora, and A1·butus unedo. Tho isolation of this West Irish flora, or Asturian typo, probably took place by tho destruction of the intermediate land in the glacial period. No traces of any associated fauna remain." M. Maury's philological inductions (sup1·a) oqua1ly corroborate the view that certain inferior and indigenous 1·aces of man, in pee-historic Albion as well as in primordial North-western Europe, wore succeeded by conquering tribes of the "great Germanic typo." PART IV. WE may now reconsider some of the practical issues of this inquiry. . It has been shown, 1st, that in America, humatile men and hu.matlle. monkeys occupy tho same palreontological zones;- 2d, that, wh1lst all such remains of man are exclusively of the American Indian type, tho monkeys called Hapale, Oebus, Oallitltrix &c. arc equall.y "tor L'r, o gem't 1·" of th1' s con t'm ont; no bimanc or qua'd rum' anc c~a:U~les ofidcn~ical "species': of ei~her being found, fossil, humatile, or hvm~, out of ~t ;-3d, that, m thou· respective epochs of existence, both, w1t~1 ~he shghtest ~odi:fications of so-termed "species" on the monl~:ys stele, have ex1sted from the geological period of Lund's Braztha~ caves, coupled with the extinct genera of animals discovered m them, down to the present day, contemporaneous; -4th, ~ha~, finally, permanence of type, as well fol' hnmauity as for simiadre 1s in·mly established in both genera, from tL.c !Jour in which we ar~ TilE POLYGENISTS. 523 living, back to a vastly remote, if not incalculable, era of unrecorded time. Now, were some ethnologist to inquire of any naturalist whether he believed that genus Bapale, Oebu.~, or Oallit!Lrix, had clambered round from Mesopotamia, via Bhcring's Straits, to Peru; or had swum across the Atlantic from Africa to Brazil, if not, perchance, athwart the Pacific from Borneo to Chili, as one alternative; or, whether American simice wore created in America, as tho other: I -presume such naturalist might, without committal, respond to this query by propounding another to the ethnologist, viz.: "D<)l)'t you think that, whichever way American man came to this continent, it was along the identical route by which American monkeys bad pioneered the track for him?" For myself, I cannot :find out how either came. Ilcrc botl1 arc, and have been, from tho earliest ante-historical period we may guess at. Whenever an ethnographer will obligingly point out to me any given primordial link, between human autochtl1ones of tho Old Worl<l and aborigines of the New, that archroological criticism is unable to shatter, I may trouble a naturalist to acquaint me with some modo by which old Oallitltrix primmvus protopitltecus, of Brazil, hold intercourse anciently with l1is elder Dt·yopithecu,s Fontani of Franec. This is tho name just f1xcd by M. Lartet,-the :first discoverer of fossil simice 313 twenty years ago, and :five years after Cuvier's decease, -to a new species of anthropoid moukey exhumed by M. Fontan, from a bank of marly-clay, at Saint-Gandens (llanto-Garonne) ncar the Pyrcnces.374 It was al>ont the same time last month 37 '' I commenced tl1at part of my present MS. which enumerated (ante, p. 459)thc different fossil monkeys hitherto disinterred; and the coincidence of M. Fontan's unforeseen exhumation of a larger and higher typo, in Em·ope too, than any before kno·wn, is so gratifying, that I prefer to let what I had then written stand, and to avail myself here of M. Lartct's most opportune improvements. It is to our collaborator Prof. Joseph Leidy, that I owe communication of tho "tiragc a part" sent to him last mail by M. Lartet. "The pieces of this monkey," explains Lartct, "that M. Fontan has charged me to present in his name to the Academy, consist in two halves of a lower jaw broken at their ascending rami, added to s1n DB 13r.A1NVILU:, O&tlographie. SH LAnTF.T, Note sur tm grand Singe fosaile qui 88 rattache au group de& Singu &upfriem·&Entrnit dos Oomptea rmdua des Stances de l'Acudlmie des Science&; Paris, tome xliii.; 28th July, 181i6; with n plnte, pp. 1-6. U76 1 nm writing at Philadelphia, on this 28th August, 1856. |
