1. _The high antiquity_ claimed for man is fitly the first question in order. Here the evidence comes and of necessity must come (1.) From _traces of man_ upon the crust of the earth, _i. e._ in the rock-strata, the drift-deposits, or in caves and lake-dwellings, or in monuments of human labor and skill: And (2.) from the traditions of the most ancient nations and the high antiquity of their existence, civilization, and monuments. Under the first head the traces are either (A.) _Remains of the human skeleton_; or (B.) _Remains of man’s work and of his tools._ (A.) As to the _remains of the human skeleton_. By universal admission these remains are not found in the rocks that bear in abundance the fossil vegetables of the third great epoch of creation; nor in those yet higher strata that contain the oldest forms of animal life whose home is in the waters; nor is man found with the reptiles, say of the fifth day of creation; nor indeed until we come to deposits of the most recent date, of a kind at least similar to those which are known to be forming within the historic age of man. From these admitted facts I make this special point, viz. that if man had lived on the earth contemporary with the oldest animal species, we ought to find not merely one skeleton or half a skeleton buried along-side of myriads of fossil sea-shells and fishes, but a fair show of specimens, so many at least as to leave no question as to his being a joint occupant with them of the earth as it then was. One or two, or even a dozen skeletons, gathered from every explored portion of the earth’s surface, are too few for the base of a theory like this because such scattered cases, in number so meager, are always subject, more or less, to abatement from the following possibilities: (a.) The human family in all ages have buried their dead, and often, during the earlier ages, in rock-hewn sepulchers or in natural caves; (b.) In all ages of the world men have been liable to fall into rock-fissures and ravines and to die there; and to leave their skeletons to become fossil there, particularly in calcareous and similar rocks where decomposition or solution in water and new deposits are in progress; (c.) Men have been wont to frequent caves for shelter, for safety in war or from persecution, and consequently might leave their bones there; or (d.) Their bones may have been dragged into caverns by flesh-eating animals or borne into strange positions by underground currents of water; or again, (e.) Since the historic Adam, drift deposits have in some circumstances been forming under water, in which waters men have been liable to be drowned and their skeletons to become imbedded in those deposits. Changes of elevation may bring such deposits to view. Such possibilities must practically nullify confidence in the proof of man’s high antiquity from his bones so long as the specimens are so exceedingly few and even these few found only quite near the surface.