Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/879

Rh by the roots of an old tree, or a crevice in a convenient bank. It moves with tolerable rapidity, and its pursuer must exercise considerable quickness before he can secure it.

"To catch a perfect specimen of the glass-snake is a very difficult business, for when alarmed it has a remarkable habit of contracting the muscles of its tail with such exceeding force that the member snaps off from the body at a slight touch, and sometimes will break into two or more pieces if struck slightly with a switch, thus earning for itself the appropriate title of glasssnake. Our common blind-worm . . . possesses a similar capacity, and often uses it in rather a perplexing fashion. Catesby remarks that this separation of the tail into fragments is caused by the construction of the joints, the muscles being articulated in a singular manner quite through the vertebrae. The tail is more than twice the length of the body, from which it can only be distinguished by a rather close inspection. The head of the glass-snake is small in proportion to the body, rather pyramidal in shape. Along each side of the body runs a rather deep double groove. The coloring of this creature is extremely variable."

Antiquity of Speaking Man.—In considering the question of the antiquity of speaking man, Mr. Horatio Hale avails himself of the theory which was suggested to Professor de Mortillet by the structure of a jaw-bone found in the cave of La Naulette in Belgium, that palæolithic man, who in this case could with more propriety be styled the precursor of man, was speechless. The jaw-bone in question is destitute of what is called the "mental tubercle," or the "genial tubercle," an appendage peculiar to man, which is indispensable to that freedom of the movements of the tongue that is essential to the possession of articulate language. Such a speechless man as this one may have been would be, as Professor Whitney remarks, "a being of undeveloped capacities, having within him the seeds of everything great and good, but seeds which only language can fertilize and bring to fruit; he is potentially the lord of Nature, the image of his Creator, but in present reality he is only a more cunning brute among brutes." Having reached a certain level, it is impossible for him to go above it. Hence, the dead uniformity in the character of the relics of man of this race. The next race, the race of Crô-Magnon, offered in some respects the strongest possible contrast to this one. It possessed the genial tubercle, with good cranial development and intellectual powers, the refinement of which is attested by the pictures it has left engraved on pieces of stone, ivory, and bone, and sculptures on bone and ivory, the spirit of which would be creditable to any artist. It is impossible to suppose that people possessing such faculties and speech would remain long in an uncivilized state if they were once placed in a country where the climate and other surroundings were favorable to the increase of population and to improvement in the arts of life. Various calculations of the age at which this race flourished place it at from four to eight thousand years ago, which is fairly consistent with the accepted chronology of the prehistoric life of the oldest historical nations, and we thus have the early origin and sudden outburst of civilization in ancient Egypt and Chaldea accounted for. If a pair of human beings, possessing the gifts supposed, appeared in some region where the climate and natural productions were favorable, what time would be required for their descendants to become numerous enough to found the early communities of Egypt and Mesopotamia, and to spread into Europe and Eastern Asia? "The question is easily answered. Suppose the population to double only once in fifty years, which is a very low estimate, it would amount in twelve hundred years to about forty million, and in fourteen hundred years would be over six hundred million, or nearly half the present population of the globe. That less than a thousand years will suffice to create a high civilization, the examples on our own continent, presented by the Mexicans, the Mayas, the Muyscas, and the Peruvians, amply prove. And that the same space of time would be sufficient for the development of the physical peculiarities which characterize the various races of men, by climatic and other influences, is made clear by the evidence accumulated by Prichard, De Quatrefages, Huxley, and other careful and trustworthy investigators."