I recognise the force of the objection; but I also take into account human intelligence, which they seem to forget. It is evidently owing to this intelligence that the man of Saint-Prest, of the Victoria cave, and of Monte Aperto has been able to survive two great geological epochs. He protected himself against cold by fire, and so survived till the return of a more genial temperature. Is it not possible, therefore, to imagine that man of an earlier period should have found in his industry the necessary resources for struggling against the conditions which the transition from the later secondary times to the earlier tertiary must have imposed upon him. In fact, the most careful judges acknowledge that man has seen the accomplishments of one of the great changes on the surface of the globe. He has lived in one of the geological epochs to which he was but lately thought to be a complete stranger; he has been contemporary with species of mammalia which have not even seen the commencement of the present epoch. There is then nothing impossible in the idea that he should have survived other species of the same class, or have witnessed other geological revolutions, or have appeared upon the globe with the first representatives of the type to which he belongs by his organisation. But this is a question to be proved by facts. Before we can even suppose it to be so, we must wait for information from observation. BOOK IV. ORIGINAL LOCALISATION OF THE HUMAN SPECIES. CHAPTER XIV. AGASSIZ’S THEORY.—CENTRES OF CREATION. I. With the exception of Australasia, with which we are but very imperfectly acquainted, and of some islands and deserts which we need not take into account, all the regions visited by man since the commencement of the era of modern discoveries have proved to be more or less inhabited. In wandering over the globe of which he took possession, the European has met with man everywhere, and quaternary palæontology reveals him to us upon the most distant shores of the two continents. Are all these different populations indigenous? Is man a native of the countries where he is represented by history, and where travellers have met with him? or has he rather invaded by degrees the surface of the globe, starting from a certain number of points, or from a single one? In other words, has man, who is now _cosmopolitan_, originally been more or less _localised_?