_On the Birthplace and Antiquity of Man._—We are naturally led to enquire where was the birthplace of man at that stage of descent when our progenitors diverged from the Catarhine stock. The fact that they belonged to this stock clearly shews that they inhabited the Old World; but not Australia nor any oceanic island, as we may infer from the laws of geographical distribution. In each great region of the world the living mammals are closely related to the extinct species of the same region. It is therefore probable that Africa was formerly inhabited by extinct apes closely allied to the gorilla and chimpanzee; and as these two species are now man’s nearest allies, it is somewhat more probable that our early progenitors lived on the African continent than elsewhere. But it is useless to speculate on this subject, for an ape nearly as large as a man, namely the Dryopithecus of Lartet, which was closely allied to the anthropomorphous Hylobates, existed in Europe during the Upper Miocene period; and since so remote a period the earth has certainly undergone many great revolutions, and there has been ample time for migration on the largest scale. At the period and place, whenever and wherever it may have been, when man first lost his hairy covering, he probably inhabited a hot country; and this would have been favourable for a frugiferous diet, on which, judging from analogy, he subsisted. We are far from knowing how long ago it was when man first diverged from the Catarhine stock; but this may have occurred at an epoch as remote as the Eocene period; for the higher apes had diverged from the lower apes as early as the Upper Miocene period, as shewn by the existence of the Dryopithecus. We are also quite ignorant at how rapid a rate organisms, whether high or low in the scale, may under favourable circumstances be modified: we know, however, that some have retained the same form during an enormous lapse of time. From what we see going on under domestication, we learn that within the same period some of the co-descendants of the same species may be not at all changed, some a little, and some greatly changed. Thus it may have been with man, who has undergone a great amount of modification in certain characters in comparison with the higher apes.