Augustus Radcliffe Grote

“ Just as, when cutting into the crust of the earth, we find the remains of animals and plants which once inhabited its former surfaces, the simpler forms below, the more complex above, so we find the remains of man's tools and implements in the clays and gravels of the last geological period of the globe, and with a like sequence in their character. The oldest and lowest forms of tools are simplest; the newer and nearer to the present surface, the more varied and complex. We have seen that the simplest weapon man could use would be a stone. ”

“ A fact may be either demonstrated, or shown to be probable, or possible. I leave it to you to judge whether these circumstances do not demonstrate that North American rough-stone implements are as old as the beds in which they are found. To me, it seems clear that the men who used these rough tools dwelt on the edge of the glacier, and their implements have become buried in the moraines which were forming at many different points during the ice period. Nor can we refuse to admit what this demonstrated fact implies, the great age of man in North America. ”

“ In truth, the greatest differences between the gorilla and man are found in the feet. The hands are not very unlike a man's; every bone and muscle is here again in its place; the thumb is a little shorter and the whole hand heavier. The muscles of the arm are more powerful and the hand is used for coarser work than man's, but after all not for work very different in kind. With them the gorilla builds a nest to sleep in, breaks off boughs, handles its food, and also attacks its enemy, holding him fast so that it can bite him. ”

“ Europeans have no authentic account of how they came to be in Europe. A great deal of our American dogmatism and Philistinism is to be ascribed to the fact that we know our origin. We came from England or Germany, and that answers such questions sufficiently. It is as far as we usually think. But now we see that we cannot speak of autocthones, or people sprung from the soil they now cultivate. Such a boast has been made by more than one race, indeed by people of such different culture as the ancient Athenians and the modern Esquimaux. ”

“ But the apes are as tailless as man is, and no more so. I might say even less so, for the gorilla seems to have one caudal vertebra less than man; but we must give more weight to the head than the tail in matters of classification. In this world heads win throughout the game of life. Certainly, the bones of a gorilla, for instance, may be readily distinguished from those of a man, but certain bones in woman differ also slightly from the corresponding ones in man, and it is a recorded fact that juries have in this way mistaken the sex of the human subject of their deliberations. ”

“ But the greater bulk of the species are not confined in their young stage to one sort of plant, while, from their activity, these flying flowers, the moths, range farther than the more slowly traveling blossoms whose honey they extract. ”

“ Now, during the glacial epoch, when the surface of our Middle States was covered with a coat of ice, the plants and animals had been swept southward of the White Mountains. They bloomed and lived in the spring-tides that softened the edge of the glacier, and enjoyed the short summer that there ensued at the source of streams fed from the melting ice. But, when the glacier retired, the summers over this region becoming longer, and the winters shorter, plants and animals followed the ice and their congenial climate northward to the valleys of New Hampshire. ”

“ The stiffness of the rings of insects is obviated by their being connected by a highly flexible membrane. The caterpillar increases in size by changing its skin. The old covering becomes too small to hold the food which is retained and transformed by the chemistry of the body into caterpillar-flesh. It splits behind the head, and, with more or less trouble, the caterpillar frees itself from it, stepping out, and leaving its old skin, a thin and almost colorless pellicle, to be blown by the summer winds into Nature's rag-bags which the spiders mostly carry about. ”

“ The setting sun was followed by human eyes for untold ages, as it bathed itself in the golden flush of evening, and was at last whelmed by the waters which were held to surround the supposed circular flat earth. ”

“ As long as there is light in the room the chimpanzee will sit up at night; as soon as the light is withdrawn it goes to sleep, lying stretched out with its hands under its head if the temperature is pleasant, but, if cold, cowering together like a human being under similar circumstances. It is evident that much might be done with the chimpanzee to make him an agreeable companion to man. Fortunately, this hard fate may be spared to the chimpanzee, because he cannot support existence in the colder regions to which our race has become acclimated. ”

“ I would speak to-night of what must have been long before his time—of early, though perhaps not earliest, man in North America. We must know this early man by our experience of his traces. New observations of fact and the ideas they have awakened in myself are put forward, so that you may judge of the reasonableness of the conclusions. And here any boy will afford a competent illustration of the evidence. Almost the first thing that our boys do is to throw stones. It is one of their ways of saying No. There is more than one parallel between savages and our boys to be maintained. ”

“ It must be remembered, however, that when we wish to designate a certain kind of moth with precision, we are obliged to fall back upon the Latin name, and that there is a good deal of prejudice against common names by scientists, whose opinions are worthy of respect, but whose foible it is to be very exact and precise in their statements about a moth, or any object upon which they have special information, but who are otherwise as fallible as the rest of us when it comes to matters of conduct and art. ”

“ AN average coroner's jury might sit on the skeleton of an anthropoid ape and return a verdict that the deceased came to his death at the hands of parties unknown, with the sublime consciousness of having performed their duty and earned their fees. ”

“ Even now a wagoner with broken cart looks around naturally for a stone to pound with, and so mend his ways. He picks up a stone on occasion as his ancestors did on most occasions. For the moment he is in the Stone age. And he uses what the earliest man must have undoubtedly used, a stone just as it is. There must have been a time when men picked up such stones as came in their way at the moment with which to throw at animals, to break their food, to injure their fellow-men. ”

“ Abbott found these implements of early man, it is quite clear that this knowledge alone will not give us the duration of man's existence in North America; for it is certain that man could not have originated at the foot of the glacier. The ice must have met him toward the close of the Tertiary period in the northern parts of Asia and America, and forced him southward; or, at a later time, it must have found him on the main belt of this continent. The Tertiary origin of man is presupposed, from the fact that he had submitted to a race-modification fitting him to endure the cold. ”

“ Neither the man of primitive nor of culture epochs is exempt from the control of the elements on all occasions. We must agree that we may account in great part, and reasonably, for the variation of man by the difference in his present physical surroundings.
The essential unity of origin of all the races of mankind is believed by the great majority of scientific men.
The study of the migration of mankind shows us that there has been replacement everywhere; that people now inhabiting any known country have not always inhabited the same tract of land. ”

“ In land-animals the bones of the limbs have more play in their sockets than in air or water animals, because flexibility is necessary to speed over the ground or trees, but it is an objection where the limbs are to be used as paddles against the air or water. In fact, the more we know of the skeleton and the environment of the animal, the more we see that its variations throughout the animal kingdom are the combined results of the movements of the organism itself and the opposition of the medium in which it moves. ”

“ If we take a map giving a bird's-eye view of the continent, with the elevations marked, we can understand the problem better. Ranges of mountains obstruct, valleys and river-channels assist, the dispersion of moths. They travel on the wings of the wind, and an important factor is the prevailing seasonal direction of the air-currents. There is in North America a summer migration of many species from the South to the North, so that, toward the autumn, several tropical kinds have crept up along the coast, or inland, up the valley of the Mississippi. ”

“ My experience is, that simplicity is the most necessary guide for the collector, whether in the field or closet. A few tools and some cork-lined boxes will accomplish a great deal in the hands of an expert, while the expensive paraphernalia of the novice will fail of adequate result. As a rule, the most pleasure and information are yielded to the student who gradually increases his stores from his own catching, who follows the moths into their retreats, and by his industry and pertinacity compels Nature to yield to him a measure of her secrets. ”

“ We know that insects and plants are so transported. Birds and ocean-currents carry seeds from land to land. Insects on a blade of grass or a fallen bough are carried down a river by the current to found colonies of their race far from their place of origin. And such circumstances give rise to races and varieties among species modifiable by the peculiarities of their new localities. The accidental migrations of man may be considered as belonging to the epoch of culture-migration, since they must more usually have occurred with a race advanced in the art of navigation. ”

“ It is very interesting, no matter what the species is, to watch it through all its changes, and be rewarded finally by the moth disclosing all its fresh beauties before our eyes, as it hangs on the side of the breeding-cage. The caterpillars of the "hawk-moths," and many "owlet-moths," enter the ground to pupate; and for this purpose the sand and soil in the bottom of the breeding-cage must not be kept too dry, nor suffered to become hard. Those which do not go into the ground will transform within cocoons spun among the moss, or on the sides of the breeding-cage. ”

“ The difference between the mass of the brain of man and that of the gorilla is proportionally, perhaps, the greatest that exists to separate the two. It has been considered by Huxley to approximate to twelve ounces. But the difference between the extremes of brain-weight in man, as exemplified in the figures here given, shows that we cannot consider intelligence to depend on the weight of the brain. All that we can say is, that a man with a large brain has capacity for the display of intelligence. ”

“ It is easy to see how, through long lapses of time, men continued to select stones, with an ever-increasing care as to their shape and size. The best to fling, the surest to hit, the sharpest to cut, were picked out, assorted in leisure moments, stored for future use. The hunter, meeting with game, could find no stone suited to bring it down at the moment, and so came at last to carry this primitive shot about with him in his hunting. ”

“ Science insists that it is true throughout the animal world, and expects that the time will come when it will be acknowledged, and our behavior improved by an increasing kindness on our part to our inferior and weaker fellow-inhabitants of the earth. The proof of the evolution of man we find first in the fact that for every bone and muscle or organ in man there is a corresponding one in the anthropoid apes. Having shown in this way that man is not separable from his physical characteristics, science enters into a comparison with regard to the difference in brain-power. ”

“ It has been my aim in the present lecture to give you the result of latest information on the earlier man of North America, and at the same time to indicate some of the different branches of science which it is necessary for us to pursue in order to understand anthropology or the study of man. We have called upon geology to describe the strata in which we find the relics of man, and to explain their probable age and the manner of their deposition. ”

“ We know now that in some cases several generations intervene before the final form of the species is assumed. When we read of the discoveries in biology of Goethe and Chamisso, we see that there is some justice in the observation that it is the poet who understands Nature best. Perhaps we should rather conclude that the imagination is a quality which the naturalist can by no means dispense with. ”