visited by Mr. Gulliver, in his “Voyage to the Houyhnhnms”) ; where
our naturalist’s informants had also beheld “ wild camels.” The
latter, senior among “MM. les Membres de l’Institut,” as well as free
from any sins but Sinology, happening to meet in Paris with a negro
of singular conformation, compares him with perfectly authentic
block-printed plates of ancient foreign nations in Mongolia, known
to Chinese encyclopaedists before an Encyclopaedia, or even a geographical
dictionary, had been struck off in Europe. A copy of this
work, the Sau Tsai Too Ewyy, is in the possession of my valued colleague
M. Pauthier, the historian of China ; with whom I have enjoyed
a laugh over its numerous designs of men with tails, while he
read me the text ; which, being in Chinese idéographies, does not
strictly fall within Voltaire’s malicious definition—“Les dictionnaires
géographiques ne sont que des erreurs par ordre alphabétique.” Mr.
Birch was so kind, subsequently, as to show me another copy in the
library of the British Museum.188 .
For the second proposition, viz : that, in palaeontology, monkeys
appear to be the forerunners of man, a more serious tone of analysis
must be adopted.
We have seen how Cuvier, at his demise in 1832, did not anticipate
the discovery, made five years later, of fossil monkeys ; which
has since established, in several gradations of genera and of, epoch, a
link between extinct quadrumanes and living bimanes. Inasmuch as
that great Naturalist, correct in his deductions from the data known
to him, committed an error, as it turned out afterwards, about fossil
186 This is one of the Sinie authorities (as quoted, that is, by D e G u ig n e s ) just referred
to by an eloquent divine, at Hope Chapel, New York, in his 2d lecture on “ The Ethnology
of America,” wherein he proves that our American Indians are only a colony, “ 450 and 600”
a . d . , of Hindostanic Budhists, since run wildT' (New York Herald, Feb. 6 , 1857.)
In order to remove at onee any latent suspicion that, at the present day, erudition is
necessary to know every piece of nonsense that has been written on the ante-Colümbian
colonization of America from any pairt of the world—Chinese, Tartar, Japanese, Israelitish,
Norwegian, Irish, Welsh, Gaulish, Hispanian, Polish, Polynesian, Phoenician, Atalantic, &c.,
&c— let me refer critics, who may be acquainted only with French, to “ Recherches sur les
Antiquités de l’Amérique du Nord et de l’Amérique du Sud, et sur la population primitive
de ces deux continents, par M . D. B. W a r d e n , ” formerly the very learned Ü. S . Consul at
Paris,— m the folio Antiquités Mexicaines (see Pulszky’s Chap. II, p. 183, ante). Humboldt
had written long previously — “ It cannot be doubted, that I the greater part of the nations
of America belong to a race of men, who, isolated ever since the infancy of the world from
the rest of mankind [and how, during such infancy, could the fathers of American Indians
come here from Mount Ararat?], exhibit, in the natural diversity of language, in their
features, and the conformation of their skull, incontestable proofs of an early and complete
separation.” (Researches concerning the Institutions and Monuments of the ancient Inhabitants
of America, London, 1814, I. pp. 249-50.) Through the 3d Lecture (New York Herald,
Feb. 9, 1857), I perceive how, even at this date, it is not yet known, in New York, that the
comicalities about the god “ Votan” alias “ Ballam,” are merely the pious inventions of
an illiterate Jesuit priest! On whom hereafter.
>!»» - a l e another in regard to foseil
man: Bis convictions were:189
“ There is not either any man [among these fossil-bones]: all the
bones of our specks that have been collected with those of 4hich we
have spoken found themselves therein accidentally, and their n n Z
her fs moreover exceedingly small; which would not assuredly hawe
been the case if men had made establishments in the countries inhab
i t^ by these animals. Where then at that time was mankind ?”
We cannot, answer decisively, as y e t - “ with those monkeys, to be
sure, whose fossil and humatile remains, unrevealed to Cuvien have
be<m.since discovered;” but this much we can do,-show that while
on thé one hand later researches have vastly extended Cuvier’s narrow
estimate of the antiquity of mankind upon earth; on the o th e ,
the gradations of epoch and of species, from the tertiaiy deposit
i i l H Ü f0Und iW m UpWards which, according to a preceding remark of Matr0c erl edcee nSte frorerms, atthioonses
humatüe monkeys have turned up in America, there is a gradual pro-
■ M b I that brings these last nearly to specific identity
the p r e s e n V i r 86 ^ ^ *>«**» W
o I ? ; an f° mT H I °btainin£ an a]most unbroken chain of
steological samples, from livmg species of callithrix and pithecus in
oo“f humi^atitlielen BB rabz iThka n“ deposits, Ma»ndF th«enc«e aupwn ardds pthrorotoupgithh itchues
nous extinct genera ot simioe catarrhinæ found in a true fossil state
a B i "nd | | W i we are enabled, upon turning round and
- to m ¡ I B « « I S M in human remains, •
caver™ f I S I S O i l t0 3 8 BeIgiai1 and Austrian 8 1
Z X ’ a T Scand™ n and Celtic barrows to the vestiges of HnbaiaHu selmOi-fo sIsiflizBed PskeBletoBns doifI uGviuaal dderlioftu’ paea, dc foupile dS w oitlhd tChae-
S E S f m S:SÜiZed Crania (Lund) 19° as well as with the semiblLh
Ü Jr - F1°rida (AGASSIZ> în “ Types”) ,- t o estai
t t | B X 5 2 B tW° P°int8’ parallel iQ 8ome degree with.
enoé 1 1 T Î ne that of the simioe’ viz: 1st, That the exist- 8tai t ma °n IÜ iS Carried ba0k at least to stage of QSSeous antiquity on both old and new continents; haunmd a2tüde
a n t vith 8 ^ a^d ai&nificant coincidence, like the genera caWkrù
cIp,uhecus, the living species and the dead, in Monkeys, all huma-
specimens of Man in America correspond, in race, with the same
® Discours sur les Révolutions, pp. .851-2, and 131-9
d Hae lal Soic. £!. rders Aerntinqtusa ihreusm dauin Neso rfdo,s s1i8ie4s5’-t9r,° upvp&. 4 9d-a7n7s. S 0™ du 8 ^ ”-
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