man; and, so far as research has been made, the like applies to India.

The zone is, therefore, greatly narrowed, and it is satisfactory to know that the region yet left is that which appears to answer to many of the required conditions. There is some warrant for believing that a belt or fringe of land, which may be called Palæotropical, once stretched from the Sunda Islands along the southern coast-line of Asia to the eastern coast of Africaperhaps westward beyond it, for the Malayan family is found in the isolated rock known as Easter Island, famous for its hundreds of ruined stone images. Of this continent, Madagascar, and smaller groups of islands in the Indian Ocean (Ceylon, &c.), would be the unsubmerged portions. Apart from the climatal suitableness of a warm region for the evolution of so slenderly organised a creature as man, it lies in the zone in which are found the most man-like apes. Moreover, such a region is required by ethnology, for we can then conceive that the inferior populations of Australia and India, the Papuans, and especially the negro race, which is not eminent for seamanship, would be enabled to reach their present abodes dryshod.

Such a speculation, and it is referred to only as such, may, although open to several objections, do service as a working hypothesis, and does not necessarily contravene the sound doctrine of the relative permanence of the great continents, and of the deep ocean basins from the earliest geological epochs.

In the freedom with which the races of mankind intercross; in the modifications of physical features induced by the various regions they inhabit, and the proof which these supply of their capacity to adapt themselves to the greatest contrasts of temperature; in the analogy of mode of intellectual, social, and religious progress, we have evidence pointing to the descent of the various races from one original stock. And in the similarity, not merely during the earlier stages of organic development, but in detail between the apparatus of the lower functions and of thought itself in man and the corresponding organs in brutes, the key-notes of unity are struck, man being "but the last term of a long series of forms, which lead by slow gradations from the highest mammal to the almost formless speck of living protoplasm which lies on the shadowy boundary between animal and vegetable life.” Nor can we stop there. The organic is not separate from the inorganic in such a sense as that the passage from the one to the other can be bridged only by a distinct creative act. By steps none the less sure because dimly traced, we advance from the crystal to the cell, and refer the forces which lock the molecules. of the one in angular embrace, and combine and animate those of the other, to the like ultimate source. No longer, therefore, do we restrict to physical phenomena the application of that doctrine of unity and continuity the denial of which is the only heresy from which we should desire deliverance.

K

ENGLISH OR BRITISH?

BY THOS. FOSTER.

FEW doubts perplex the reader of most of our modern histories. He is told that certain events happened, certain races conquered or were overcome, that such and such laws were enacted and were administered, such and such customs prevailed or disappeared, and so forth. But he is not very often told how much doubt exists in reality about many of the matters thus dealt with. Very seldom is any distinction drawn between what is well known, what is probable, what is surmised, and what is barely possible. The evidence of historians is often quoted or referred to in support of statements, though even this is not always thought necessary; while evidence of an opposite kind is left unnoticed. Possibly this is the only method by which the generality of men can be persuaded to study history at all. But unquestionably it is not a philosophically sound plan. Nor indeed is it quite safe to assume that the more accurate method would deter readers. The historian, if he pleased, could present historic doubts as plainly and as attractively as historic certainties, or as historic untruths in the guise of certainties. He might borrow a lesson from the teachers of science. Formerly it was thought necessary in teaching science to the multitude to state as

facts many things about which science was in reality doubtful. The older books of science are indeed laughably dogmatic. But now, not only has it been found safe to distinguish matters doubtful from matters certain, but it has been found that the general student of science takes as much interest in the discussion of scientific doubts and difficulties as in the statement of scientific facts, or of mere guesses falsely presented as facts. And, after all, in that word. falsely" lies the gist of the whole matter. We are not to inquire whether it is more agreeable to the general reader to read history as Macaulay, Green, and others present it, than to have the opportunity of weighing historic evidence, but to consider if it is truthful and right to present what is doubtful as if it were well-established truth. Lord Melbourne used to say (I have seen the saying attributed to Sydney Smith) that he wished he were as cocksure of anything as Tom Macaulay was cocksure of everything. Possibly he did Macaulay justice in regarding him as really sure where he was so confident in tone. to assume an air of cocksureness when really conscious of multiplied doubts and difficulties, is, to say the least, a mistake; and history will never be studied in the spirit which alone or chiefly makes its study valuable, until the teachers of history are content, when really doubtful, to use occasionally such expressions as "the balance of evidence favours the opinion," "it seems probable," "it may be suggested as possible," instead of leaving the reader to infer that the

But

records of long-past times are far more accurate and complete than those of the current era, respecting which, as we know, the best informed are often unable to agree.

The subject I am now to deal with illustrates well the confident manner of many modern historians, where the evidence is most incomplete, unsatisfactory, and even contradictory.

We used to be taught, indeed were never suffered to doubt, that when Vortigern invited Hengist and Horsa to help him against the Picts and Scots, the Britons had become a feeble cowardly race, insomuch that their Saxon allies, after accomplishing the work they were sent for, were soon able to dispossess their hosts, and drive them into Wales and Cornwall. Such a tale presented in an attractive form by Goldsmith, who wrote about history as charmingly and as carelessly as he wrote about natural history, was accepted as readily as were the amazing teachings about science in the school catechisms of pre-Broughamite times. But as science nowadays has become cautious and modest, and as even history in one aspect has become inquiring and critical, it might be expected that we should find the amazing statement of the older histories qualified considerably in modern treatises, even of the so-called popular kind. At any rate, if the complete dispossession of the British inhabitants of this country had become a demonstrated historic fact, one might expect that the nature of the evidence would be indicated, and the stupendous difficulties