much of the same type, and a monstrous representation of a dragon in the form of a huge saurian, still forms the central object at Japanese festivals.

All these are variants of the original monster type, changing and shifting in their characteristics, like the shadowy beings of which they are the representations the sea-nymph is a very favourite form and constantly reappears; but the dragon with scales and wings, claws and cruel teeth, is still more frequent, and has remained from age to age distinctly a ferocious, flying reptile, until the tradition has been justified by the discoveries of prosaic science.

The subject of monstrous beings necessitates a reference to the large and important class of the Pan and Satyr type. A being in the form of a man above the waist, and of a goat or bull below, and with cloven hoofs and horns is found in the mythology of many nations; and as this form has become consecrated to the medieval Devil, and still lives in the conception of the vulgar mind, a few moments of inquiry into the probable origin of the idea will not be out of place.

Like all other ideals of a kindred nature, that of the satyr was built up from a number of independent sources, and we should be mistaken if we expected to pitch upon a single root from which it could be shown to have sprung: it has, on the contrary, been

the result of a long course of evolution. The final product of evolution may be, and often is, as different from the germ as the oak tree is from the acorn; and in the evolution of the satyr we probably have an example of this difference.

We have seen what a miserable and limited existence that of man was before he learned the use of artificial fire and light; when he had no better implements than roughly chipped flints; when he lived in holes and dens of the earth, and had to fight for sheer existence through the dark and dreary nights, unlighted and unwarmed, against the better equipped races of the brute creation: when his food was only fruit and uncooked roots and the raw flesh of such animals as he could overcome, and of the human enemies he could conquer. It is not to be supposed that these early undeveloped men were few in number, or limited in range: on the contrary, careful search and intelligent deduction have shown beyond dispute, that these early races of men were probably spread over the whole world, and that they were so numerous as to leave recognizable traces of their existence in almost every country; traces in the form of flints, undoubtedly shaped by the hand of man, and although buried for countless ages in beds of river drift now far below the present surface, yet sown broadcast, and in such profusion, as to be constantly found when searched for by the very few

who are competent to recognize their character. Europe has been of course the principal field of research, and has not unnaturally been most fruitful in results but these paleolithic implements have also been found in Palestine, Assyria, India and Japan; in Algeria, Egypt, and other parts of Africa; throughout the whole of America; in Australia and Polynesia: every year reports of

similar discoveries in fresh countries are made to the scientific world. The Danish Museum alone contains 30,000 stone implements, and the number is constantly increasing.2

If we start with the whole world teeming with men of this primitive type; and then realize the first spark of a civilization appearing at some one point, where the power of a higher culture took root and then radiated, we can understand how this power of civilization as it radiated drove back the savage races. It is the instinct and the universal custom of the more powerful to drive the less powerful away from the most favoured districts of the earth, and to leave their inferiors to shift as best they can in those parts where Nature is less kind, and life more hard to sustain: and so it came about, that as stage

1 "Prehistoric Times," by Sir J. Lubbock, 103; and see Prof. Boyd Dawkins' "Address to the Section of Anthropology at Southampton," 1882, British Association.

after stage of civilization was attained, and as wave after waye of culture swept over the world, the primitive savage who had before roamed unopposed through the earth-only meeting everywhere with the same dead level of ignorance-was driven further and further from the centres of enlightenment. When history first came into existence, the rudest savage was only to be found in those inhospitable confines of the then known world, which were deemed the border-land of chaos: the northern lands of mist and darkness the rock-girt or distant island: the burning sandy desert with its lurid horrors: the impenetrable forests, backed by perpetual mountain snows : jungles or fastnesses, where the tangled labyrinth of vegetation, the tiger and the serpent, the deadly miasma and the treacherous swamp, combined to create inaccessibility. This process had been repeated, as each fresh development had been established, and it is certain that many succeeding strata of savages have been completely crowded out of the world and become extinct, by the ever widening circle of civilization:-each crowded out by a succeeding race, more civilized, and therefore more powerful, although only so by comparison; and itself doomed to be crowded out by another race, relatively superior. This is the natural history of so-called aborigines; but recorded history only cuts in at a period when the aborigines for the time

being represented a survival of untold ages, and however low the survivors might be found, there had certainly in the past been vast depths of human existence infinitely lower still, the representatives of which had been swept away, and which can only now be realized by analogical deduction.

Analogy however furnishes us with no uncertain data from which to deduce the course of past events on this subject. The natives of Australia, the Bushmen of South Africa, the Veddas of the interior of Ceylon, the Nagas and other hill tribes of the Indian Peninsula, and the Andamanese islanders, all probably represent remnants of populations which once were general, but which have been driven into their present narrow limits; and which, in spite of the efforts of the Aborigines Protection Society, are doomed to early extinction. How of such races many have died out in recent times! unable, like the preadamite creatures of Chaldean mythology, to endure the light-in this case, the light and power of civilization.

These tribes are so shy, and so jealous of observation, that we hardly have time to acquaint ourselves with their character and habits, before we see them melt away and disappear, as it were, under our very eyes. We find them physically and socially, and at times even mentally, so different from the races which now hold possession of the world, as to make