re-emergence, took "in round numbers 180,000 years for its completion."

Well does the veteran philosopher add :-"I am aware that it may be objected that the average rate here proposed is a purely arbitrary and conjectural one."*

Dr. Andrews appears to show, by careful observations, that the present surface-land of North America rose out of the waters of the glacial period between 5,500 and 7,500 years ago. This appears to limit within these bounds the possible duration of the human period in North America. Dr. Dawson says there are other lines of evidence which would reduce the residence of man in America to a much shorter time.+ From a communication to "Nature," of January 14, 1875, we gather that the distinction between palæolithic and neolithic obtains in implements imbedded in the soil there-the former being always rough and more deeply buried. But we also infer that both belong to one type of people, and that the superiority of the latter is the result of progressive improvement.

The wearing away of the land to the south of the Hampshire coast, partly in soft beds and partly in chalk, would require, it is said, far more than ten thousand years. But why go into such a calculation at all, inasmuch as the hypothesis of gradual uniform erosion is wholly inadmissible. Mr. Evans, placing his spectator on the edge of the Bournemouth cliff, and bidding him gaze over the waste of waters in quest of the lost Atlantis, may as well accept the ancient tradition of its sudden submergence, confirmed as it is by the appearance of the cliffs. The gazer, on any other supposition, could have beheld no appreciable change, and there would have been nothing remarkable in the prospect, however long he might have continued at his post. With regard to the antiquity of the implements, Mr. Evans says:"With our present amount of knowledge, it is hopeless to attempt its determination with anything like precision." This does not exclude hypotheses, but it reduces it to mere working suggestion. What, then, is the value of Mr. Evans's argument for a long period between the change from paleolithic to neolithic? He says: "It can hardly have been the work of a few years, or even of a few centuries." Granted; but when it is evident that the change did not take place from ordinary slow causes, but was necessitated by sudden alterations, a period of one thousand years will amply suffice. If Mr. Tylor

* Since these observations were written, and on the 22nd of the present month, this distinguished philosopher has passed away.

+ Dawson, Earth and Man, p. 295.

+ Ibid., p. 617.

is right in intercalating the pluvial period here, we have then, antecedent to this, say at least 3,000 years in the ordinary chronology of the Bible, within which to place the mammoth age and its hunters in the West.

We may assume it as established that there was a time when England was connected with the continent, when big animals roamed in summer up the water-courses and across the uplands, and man, armed only with rude stones, followed them into the marshes and woods, hunted them for sustenance, and consumed them in shelter of caves, then accessible from the river levels. This state of things was continued until disturbed by oscillations of surface, accompanied by excessive rainfalls and rushes of water from the water-sheds of the rivers, until the great animals were driven out or destroyed, and man ceased to visit these parts. The disturbances continued, the Straits of Dover were formed, the configuration of the soft parts of the islands and continents was fixed, action subsided, and the present state of things obtained. Man resumed his residence, but with loss of the mammoth and its companions. The reindeer now constituted the type of a state of things which lasted down to the historic period, without any other break from that time to

this.

We have then, first a period during which the waters of the valleys ran at higher levels, and were considerably larger,the mammoth age. Then a diluvial and pluvial period, part of the mammoth age, a period of great physical changes; and afterwards the present state of things.

Now we know tolerably well the duration of the last. Secular history concerning the West contains no records earlier than the date usually assigned to the foundation of Carthage, B.C. 844, which leaves 1,643 years after the Flood, during which all written history is silent, and 1,656 years before the Flood, also quite dark. The latter 1,656 years was a time of great operations. We know that enormous physical results have been produced and completed in very brief time. Instances of this are matters of familiar history. If we assign 1,656 years for the occurrence of this turbulent epoch, no one can say that it is insufficient. Then we have upwards of 3,000 years from the alleged introduction of man, according to the book of Genesis; if the mammoth period occupied 1,000 years, we have 2,000 years before secular history for the duration of the neolithic age, and all its accompaniments; i.e., take the whole of the period since the Flood as the recent period, and the 1,656 before that, to include the man-and-mammoth age and diluvial period. It should not be forgotten that the

necessities of the genealogies and migrations after the Flood recorded in Genesis, appear to require a far longer time than the annalists assign. Any extension conceded by the chronologists would be absorbed by the geologists, as their data allow of great extension, though not requiring it. Among the changes involved during the period which includes the epoch of disturbance, is that of the severance of the Isle of Wight from the mainland, which must have been subsequent to the blottingout of the great river, preceding the Thames, Seine, Somme, and Rhone in a vast delta, on the banks of which the implements at Bournemouth were found. Mr. Fox, quoted with approval by Mr. Evans, says: "The severance of this island from the mainland, it appears to me, effected under very unusual circumstances, and at no very distant period, the present channel of the Solent being pretty nearly equally deep and equally broad throughout its entire length of fourteen miles, proves at once that it was not formed in the usual way of island-severing channels,-i.e., by gradual encroachments of the sea, but by its being originally the trunk or outlet of a very considerable river."+ In further indicating the progress of the changes that took place here at the close of the mammoth period, Mr. Evans says: "Directly this closer communication with the sea formed for the Dorsetshire rivers, they would of course, owing to the now rapid fall, excavate their valleys with greater speed at their mouths, and directly they became tidal the sea would make rapid inroads on the soft sand and clay exposed to their action." Thus quickly would the change be made which has finally resulted in the present configuration and contour.

Chronologists are agreed that about 2,000 years before Christ, Abraham migrated from Mesopotamia to Canaan, and that at this time, Egypt, at least, was old in civilization.§ Beyond this we have no positive scale of time in Scripture; for it is evident, from the narrative itself, that the latter does not cover the whole of time.

Usher estimates from Scripture, the creation of man as about 2,000 years before this. During the latter portion of this time, civilization was proceeding under settled governments in the East, interrupted, says the record and tradition, by a flood.

*Dawson, Earth and Man, p. 605.

+ Ib., p. 605.

+ lb., p. 610.

§ "This is the boundary, in looking backwards, of Time-absolute; all beyond is time-relative."-Duke of Argyll, Man Primeval, p. 84.

So Lucretius,

66

Thus, too, the insurgent waters once o'erpowered,
As fables tell, and deluged many a state;

Till, in its turn, the congregated waves

By cause more potent conquered, heaven restrain'd
Its ceaseless torrents, and the flood decreased."

Barbarism covered the whole Western world; neither in the
2,000 years before Abraham, nor in the 2,000 years afterwards,
have we any light reflected from these regions to the East. In
this 4,000 years, or in the somewhat longer period which pro-
bably will be ultimately settled as warranted by the record, we
place hypothetically all the phenomena of the later maminalian
age, including the introduction of man as a hunter, the first
occupation of the caves by him also, the diluvial phenomena of
the wide valleys, the oscillations and disturbances of the
earth's crust, alterations in the coast-line and physical settle-
ment of the country; after this comes the second occupation of
the caves.
In short, if we say that, hypothetically, the whole
first-known human age occurred within 4,000 years of the Chris-
tian era, no one can say that it is geologically impossible. Who
can say that 1,643 years is insufficient to comprise all the pheno-
mena that occurred during a period confessedly characterized
by more rapid and extensive action than the present, a period
during which ruptures in the earth's crust, oscillations, and
permanent uprising took place, and the intermittent action
of violent floods caused the deposit and disturbance and re-
settlement of the gravels and brick-earth? There is nothing
to interfere with the prevalent opinion that man was introduced
here whilst the glacial period was dying out, and whilst it was
still furnishing flood-waters sufficient to scour and re-sort
the gravels of the valleys down which they flowed. This suppo-
sition may be extended to both the great continents. Professor
Dawson says, "A sufficient number of probable indications
appear to make it not unlikely that man had reached America
before the disappearance of the mastodon."*

The late Sir R. Murchison, and the late Mr. J. W. Flower, who had made careful study of the drifts, attributed the implement gravels to the sudden and tumultuous action of floods not of long continuation. In the discussion on Mr. Prestwich's paper of February, 1872, the latter expressed himself "willing to concede that the implement-bearing gravel-beds had been deposited under more tumultuous action than that due to rivers of the present day, though still forced to attribute

* Leisure Hour, 1874, p. 740.

the excavation of the existing valleys, and the formation of terraces along their slopes, to river-action."*

Why then, with all this geological evidence of uncertainty recorded by the masters of the science, do the same masters or their disciples, dogmatize on the subject of long periods? Why has this scientific dogmatism crept into elementary treatises, and is there laid down with all the confidence of axiomatic knowledge? Verily the domain of fashion is not confined to dress, but certainly extends to geological theories. In Dr. Draper's "History of the Conflict between Religion and Science," the following dogmata occur:-" Recent researches give reason to believe that under low and base grades the existence of man can be traced back into tertiary times." Now, on this subject the most recent authorities on both sides the Atlantic not only give no countenance to this, but flatly deny it. The reviewer of Mr. Boyd Dawkins's book, in the Athenæum, in the face of all the geological evidence, quietly says:-" We may infer with a high degree of probability that a paleolithic people migrated from the East into Europe along with the peculiar pleistocene Fauna in the pre-glacial age, and disappeared with the same Arctic mammalia, leaving behind them as their representatives the Eskimos; they were cave-dwellers, and occupied their time with hunting and fishing, and supporting life in a rigorous climate. An indefinite interval of time which cannot be measured by years, separated these paleolithic peoples from their successors of the prehistoric times."

Sir Charles Lyell, in his "Student's Geology" adduces the old arguments, the disappearance of various species of animals, the deepening and widening of valleys, the change in the course of rivers, the formation of solid floors of stalagmite and the change of climate, to support his statement, that "the 3,000 or 4,000 years of the historical period do not furnish us with any appreciable measure for calculating the number of centuries which would suffice for such a series of changes; which are by no means of a local character, but have operated over a considerable portion of Europe." We have seen that the opposite conclusion is at least equally tenable, and far more probable. According to Mephistopheles in "Faust" :"Words answer well, when men enlist 'em,

In building up a favourite system;
With words men dogmatize, deceive;
With words dispute or words believe;
And be the meaning much or little,
The word can lose nor jot nor tittle."

*Geol. Soc. Proceedings.

+ H. S. King & Co., 1875, p. 195.