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perceptible modifications of form, has developed the wonderful intellect of the Germanic races."

"Natural selection," therefore, acts upon the mental variations of man and thus modifies his mind, and its organ the brain. The form of his cranium will be subject to change while the other parts of his organization will not be materially affected by natural selection. This agrees with the fact that Ethnologists have fixed upon the skull as the part which offers the most constant and the most characteristic differences between races, and it is undoubtedly the portion of the skeleton most subject to variation under the influence of civilization. Peculiarities of constitution, such as capacity of resisting miasma and adaptation to peculiar climates must always have been induced in man by "Natural Selection," as he spread over the earth; and a certain amount of external physical modification would probably have accompanied such internal change, but the author thinks these could hardly account for the marked and constant differences of existing races, and which seem in many cases independent of climate. These he thinks are the last effects of natural selection in bringing man into harmony with external conditions just at the time when his mental faculties had sufficiently advanced to render such modifications no longer necessary. "This must have been in the very infancy of the human race, when man was gregarious but scarcely social, perceptive but not reflective, 'ere any sense of right or feelings of sympathy had been developed in him."

If, however, the general physical structure of man can thus have remained stationary, his advancing mental development alone serving to keep him in harmony with the changing conditions of the universe, there is no reason why he may not have existed at a much more remote geological epoch than has yet been thought possible. He may even have lived in Eocene or Miocene times surrounded by mammalia of entirely different genera from those now existing. For in the long series of ages during which the forms of these primitive mammals were being slowly specialised into those of the present fauna, the power which acted to modify them could only affect the mental organization, the brain and the cranium of man. The absence of all human remains in the middle or later tertiaries of Europe Mr. Wallace thinks has little weight, because as we go farther back in time it is natural to suppose that man's distribution was less universal than at present. Europe was in a great measure submerged during the tertiary epoch, and though its scattered islands may have

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been uninhabited by man it by no means follows that he did not at the same time exist in warm or tropical continents. "If Geologists can point out to us the most extensive land in the warmer regions of the earth which has not been submerged since eocene or miocene times,it is there that we may expect to find some traces of the very early progenitors of man. It is there that we may trace back the gradually decreasing brain of former races till we come to a time when the body also begins materially to differ. Then we shall have reached the starting point of the human family. Before that period he had not mind enough to preserve his body from change, and would therefore have been subject to the same comparatively rapid modifications of form as the other mammals."

"If these views have any foundation," continues our author, "they give us a new argument for placing man apart, as not only the head and culminating point of the grand series of organic nature, but as in some degree a new and distinct order of beings. From those infinitely remote ages when the first rudiments of organic life appeared upon the earth, every plant and every animal has been subject to one great law of physical change. As the earth has gone through its grand cycles of geological, climatal, and organic progress, every form of life has been subject to its irresistible action, and has been continually but imperceptibly moulded into such new shapes as would preserve their harmony with the ever changing universe. No living thing could escape this law of its being; none could remain unchanged and live, amid the universal change around it.

"At length, however, there came into existence a being in whom that subtle force we term mind became of greater importance than his mere bodily structure. Though with a naked and unprotected body, this gave him clothing against the varying inclemencies of the seasons. Though unable to compete with the deer in swiftness or with the wild bull in strength, this gave him weapons with which to capture or overcome both. Though less capable than most other animals of living on the herbs and the fruits that unaided nature supplies, this wonderful faculty taught him to govern and direct nature to his own benefit, and make her produce food for him when and where he pleased. From the moment when the first skin was used as a covering,-when the first rude spear was formed to assist in the chase, the first seed sown or shoot planted, a grand revolution was effected in nature, a revolution which in all previous ages of the earth's history had had no parallel; for a being had arisen who

was no longer necessarily subject to change with the changing universe, a being who was in some degree superior to nature, inasmuch as he knew how to control and regulate her action, and could keep himself in harmony with her, not by a change in body but by an advance of mind."

Taking this view of the effects of man's intellect Mr. Wallace thinks there is something to be said even for those who would make him an order; a class or a sub-kingdom by himself; though in a true zoological classification he cannot rank higher than a family. It is evident also that man differs from all other animals in being probably a permanent inhabitant of the earth in his present form, for as long as the physical conditions of the earth's surface enable him to exist upon it at all, we may expect that he will be able to keep himself in harmony with the universe by the changes he can himself induce in organic and inorganic nature. It is almost inevitable that the time must come when the earth will only produce cultivated or domestic varieties of animals and plants, owing to man's selection having overcome "natural selection."

The argument of the paper is shortly recapitulated as follows:"In two distinct ways has man escaped the influence of those laws which have produced unceasing change in the animal world. By his superior intellect he is enabled to provide himself with clothing and with weapons, and by cultivating the soil to obtain a constant supply of congenial food. This renders it unnecessary for his body, like those of the lower animals, to be modified in accordance with changing conditions, to gain a warmer natural covering, to acquire more powerful teeth or claws, or to become adapted to obtain and digest new kinds of food as circumstances may require. By his superior sympathetic and moral feelings, he becomes fitted for the social state;-he ceases to plunder the weak and helpless of his tribe, he shares the game which he has caught with less active or less fortunate hunters, or exchanges it for weapons which even the sick or the deformed can fashion, -he saves the sick and wounded from death;and thus the power which leads to the rigid destruction of all animals who cannot in every respect help themselves, is prevented from acting on him."

This power is "Natural Selection;" and as by no other means can it be shown, that individual variations can ever become accumulated and rendered permanent so as to form well marked races; it follows that the differences we now behold in mankind must have

been produced before he became possessed of a human intellect or human sympathies. This view also renders possible and even requires the existence of man at a comparatively remote geological epoch. For during the long periods in which other animals have been undergoing modifications in their whole structure to such an amount as to constitute distinct species and genera, man's body will have remained specifically the same, while his head and brain alone will have undergone modification perhaps equal to theirs. Thus it is that Prof. Owen founding his classification on the brain places man in a distinct sub-class of mammalia while he admits that in his general structure there is a close approximation to the Anthropoid apes "every tooth and every bone being strictly homologous,-which makes the determination of the difference between Homo and Pithecus the anatomist's difficulty." Mr. Wallace claims as in some degree corroborative of the truth of his theory that it harmonizes these two main facts, and neither requires us to depreciate the intellectual chasm which separates man from the apes, nor refuses full recognition of the striking resemblances to them, that exist in other parts of his structure.

XLVI.—THE HABITS OF THE GORILLA.

(1.) SAVAGE AFRICA, BEING THE NARRATIVE OF A TOUR IN EQUATORIAL, SOUTH-WESTERN AND NORTH-WESTERN AFRICA. By W. Winwood Reade. London, Smith, Elder & Co. 1863. (2.) NOTES ON THE DERBYAN ELAND, THE AFRICAN ELEPHANT AND THE GORILLA.-By W. Winwood Reade, Proc. Zool. Soc. 1863, p. 169.

So much of interest is involved in the correctness of what has been stated by a recent celebrated traveller in Equatorial Africa concerning the habits of the Anthropoid Apes, that even the evidence of one who has been there and has not "seen the Gorilla," though he made strong efforts to get a glimpse at him, is acceptable. Mr. Winwood Reade" a young man about town" as he describes himself-who struck out the novel idea of making the forests of Western Africa the object of his tour instead of Switzerland or Italy-and moreover accomplished it-passed five months in the Gaboon in 1862. Mr. Reade made repeated excursions into the forests with the native hun

ters in search of the "great invisible" but all in vain, as although on several occasions he got on recent tracks and even within a few yards of the animal, before he could get within view "the Gorilla had run away!"

Mr. Reade states broadly that he does not believe that M. Du Chaillu ever killed a Gorilla, and, as it appears to us, gives very good reasons for his disbelief.

"Not having been able to find out at the Gaboon," says Mr. Reade, "whether M. Du Chaillu had killed a Gorilla or not, nobody having visited the interior of the Fernand Vaz since he left it, I determined to go there, and made a tedious voyage by open boat and canoe from Gaboon to Ngumbi. On arriving at this town, pretending of course to be a trader, almost the first question I was asked, was, whether I would buy Gorillas as M. Du Chaillu did. I refused to buy them, but said that I would give a large reward to any hunter who would get me a shot at one, and also a present to the King. They seemed astonished at this, and asked me why I wished to do a thing which other white men had not wished to do."

"Now I had taken with me two interpreters, and had managed to make them quarrel so that there might be no collusion in the matter. I examined Etia, a hunter in whose company M. Du Chaillu professes to have killed Gorillas, by each interpreter separately. I examined in the same manner the five guides who escorted him into the Apingi country; and though they spoke of M. Du Chaillu in high terms, and appeared to have a great affection for him, they all replied that he had never shot a Gorilla."

Having therefore wiped out M. Du Chaillu and all the statements put forward by that too famous traveller as to the habits of the Gorilla, let us see what Mr. Reade has to offer us in their place. Mr. Reade, as we have already stated, spent five months in the Gorilla country, and "did not leave that part of Africa until he had completely satisfied himself respecting the habits of that animal." His evidence is collected from statements made to him by men who had killed Gorillas, and is derived from three distinct districts of Equatorial Africa-from the natives of the Muni river, those of the Gaboon river, and those of the Fernand Vaz. From the latter locality, where Gorillas are most plentiful, he obtained most information. The Gorilla, therefore, according to Mr. Reade, "is found in those thick and solitary places of the forest where animal life is scarce. His food is strictly vegetable. He moves along the ground on all

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