In the old European or Asiatic continent we had been accustomed to regard the earliest generations of mankind as entirely lost in the mists of antiquity; but, till lately, we looked on the continent of America as being, in respect of its population, far more recent, and as affording a more simple subject for ethnological speculation. The civilisation of Mexico and Peru, destroyed by the Spaniards, was traced to Egypt, or to some other portion of the Old World. The vagrant tribes of savages that lived upon the chase were the still more degenerate children of Europe. But this new continent is now found to have been the habitation of man at so remote a period, that the civilisations of Mexico and Peru, however they originated (and they were probably native), must rank amongst its modern events. Ruins of more ancient cities are found buried in its forest, and monuments of some forgotten worship are traced upon the banks of its rivers. The remains of man himself—parts of the human skeleton—have been found in positions which suggest an antiquity far beyond that of the cities of the Nile or the Euphrates. Some of these cases are well known, and well known on account of the disputes and discussions they have given occasion to; others, from which (geologically speaking) only a modest antiquity has been inferred, seem to our author to be worthy of credit. He says:— “In the post-pliocene formations of South Carolina, exposed along the bed of the Ashley River, remains of the megatherium, megalodon, and other gigantic extinct mammals, occur, not only associated with existing species peculiar to the American continent, but also apparently with others hitherto believed to have been domesticated and introduced for the first time by modern European colonists. But, still more interesting for our present purpose, as possibly indicating the contemporaneous existence of some of those strange extinct mammals with man, are notices of the remains of human art in the same formation. Professor Holmes, in exhibiting a collection of fossils from the post-pliocene of South Carolina before the Academy of Natural Science at Philadelphia, remarked:—‘Dr Klipstein, who resides near Charleston, in digging a ditch for the purpose of reclaiming a large swamp, discovered and sent to me the tooth of a mastodon, with the request that I should go down and visit the place, as there were indications of the bones and teeth of the animal still remaining in the sands which underlie the peat-bed. Accordingly, with a small party of gentlemen, we visited the doctor, and succeeded not only in obtaining several other teeth and bones of this animal, but nearly one entire tusk; and immediately alongside of the tusk discovered the fragment of pottery which I hold in my hand, and which is similar to that manufactured at the present time by the American Indians.’