Is it not possible—nay, even extremely probable—that, under the irresistible pressure of civilised man, his immediate precursor may have become extinct? All the human races that now tend to bridge the interval between the highest man and the highest ape are fast becoming extinct under this very pressure. The gulf widens, and will widen. The Caribs and Tasmanians have passed away, while the Australians, New Zealanders, aboriginal Americans, Eskimo, and others, are fast following in their wake, and this all in a comparatively short space of time. There is undoubtedly now a far greater physical and mental interval between the Hottentot woman and such men as Gladstone and Darwin than between the Hottentot and an ape. It is a fact beyond dispute that man was not in such a high state of development ages gone by as at present. The earliest traces of man exhibit him to us in the Palæolithic, or old stone, age, as wild and living in caves, using only the rudest stone implements with which to battle with the ferocious monsters around him. His jaw was then prognathous, like the ape, and his body large and powerful. In the limestone caverns of France have been discovered the fossil remains of men who inhabited caves and belonged to the Palæolithic, or early Pleistocene, period. Together with these troglodytes, or cave-dwellers, were rough, unpolished stone implements and weapons, denoting a low state of civilisation. Other caves, in later strata, give us lighter stone weapons, of better finish, and occasionally horn dart-points, such as would be used for catching smaller game. Numbers of skin-scrapers also were found, suggesting the idea that the people used the hides of animals for clothing, instead of going naked, as their ancestors. The hairy character of the body would be probably giving place to a finer, smoother, and more delicate outer skin, which would necessitate clothing of some kind. Still later we find implements altogether of flint, lancet-shaped, admirably-proportioned, and of three sizes, adapted for arrow, javeline, and lance points respectively, and designed to be fitted to wooden and bone shafts. After these appear arrows and darts of deer’s horn and bone, and stone and flint tools, which were used for making these arrows. We also find such implements as bone awls and needles for piercing and sewing skins, arrow-heads furnished with barbs on each side, and harpoons barbed on one side only. Now was man’s intellect fairly on the swing; but still he was, as yet, only in the Palæolithic period, for not one polished implement nor fragment of pottery is found in their stations. They were surrounded by ferocious carnivora, which sometimes fell victims to their weapons. The mammoth still tenanted the valleys, and the reindeer was the common article of food. They were hunters, possessed of the rudest modes of existence, and with but little of what is now called civilisation.