26 Santos, in Brazil; but to these, Sir Charles is unable to assign any date. Of the 50,000 years claimed by Dr. Dowler for the skeleton discovered in the delta of the Mississippi, at the depth of only sixteen feet from the surface, Sir Charles says, "I cannot form an opinion as to the value of the chronological calculations which have led Dr. Dowler" to this conclusion. The last instance of this sort given in Sir Charles's third chapter, relates to some coral reefs in Florida, where in a calcareous conglomerate "supposed by Agassiz to be about 10,000 years old, some fossil human remains were found by Count Pourtalis." The fourth chapter introduces us to the Belgian caverns, and especially to the human bones and flint implements found in the caverns near Liége, by Dr. Schmerling, and by him referred to "the antediluvian period." To these remains Sir Charles declines to assign any positive or even probable date, although agreeing with their discoverer that they had been washed into the caverns where they are now found, through fissures, probably by some great flood. On the "Fossil human skeleton of the Neanderthal cave," (found in 1857, in the side of a ravine near Düsseldorf,) discussed in the fifth chapter, Sir Charles says, "On the whole, I think it probable that this fossil may be of about the same age as those found by Schmerling in the Liége caverns; but as no other animal remains were found with it, there is no proof that it may not be newer. Its position lends no countenance whatever to the supposition of its being more ancient."" 26 But of the mud deposit itself, the delta of the Mississippi, Sir Charles supposes, both in his earlier and later writings, that it may have required 100,000 years for its formation. On the other hand, such eminent naturalists as Dolomieu, Cuvier, and Elie de Beaumont reckon its requirements at a few thousand years only. And in Dana's "Manual of Geology" (1863; p. 647) where we have the latest measure ments of the enlargement of the delta, we have Sir Charles's estimate ("Second Visit," ii., 250,) diminished by nearly three fourths. The data furnished by M. Elie de Beaumont, (" Leçons de Géologie Pratique,") combined with the result of the latest observations, gives for the growth of the delta a period of between 5000 and 6000 years. "Lyell's Antiquity, p. 78. The flint implements found in the valley of the Somme furnish the subject for the next chapter. These were brought to light about the year 1841, by M. Boucher de Perthes, who collected many of them near Abbeville, and who, in his "Antiquités Celtes," published in 1847, styled these ancient tools or weapons "antediluvian." At a later date, another investigator, Dr. Rigollot, obtained several hundreds of these implements from St. Acheul, in the suburbs of Amiens. The valley of the Somme, from Amiens to Abbeville, is about a mile wide. The surrounding district consists of gently undulating elevated plains of chalk, capped here and there by tertiary outliers. Amiens is forty miles from the sea; Abbeville about fourteen. The river valleys in the district are narrow, and exhibit deposits of loam and gravel on their sides; the middle of the valleys being for the most part made up of marsh and peat overlying gravel. The only conclusion at which Sir Charles arrives from the relics here found-found generally in sand or gravel, about twenty or thirty feet from the surface-is, "that the flint tools and their fabricators were coeval with the extinct mammalia embedded in the same strata.' The same conclusion-" the former co-existence of man with many extinct mammalia is arrived at as the result of “ a careful exploration of a cave at Brixham, Devon;" also considered in the same chapter. 28 29 The next four chapters are occupied with a wide and abundant review of the whole question of the flint implements. Their discovery, and the description of their character is given in a variety of instances occurring in Picardy, in the valley of the Somme, in the basin of the Seine, in the valley of the Oise, and in England, near Bedford, in Suffolk, in Somerset, in Glamorgan. We have also the description of a burying place found in 1852, at Aurignac, in Southern France. The single result, however, of all these investigations is merely that of which we have already heard-" the contemporaneousness of man and some of the extinct animals." The eleventh chapter discusses "the fossil man of Denise," and "the human fossil of Natchez, on the Mississippi." But the first of these, besides being of doubtful genuineness, does not affect the question at issue. Of the second, the fossil of Natchez, Sir Charles pronounces that it is probably not more ancient than the alluvium of the Somme, in which flint implements are found." With the next hundred and twenty pages, on "The Glacial Period," we have here no concern. But in the sixteenth chapter we come to the consideration of "the loess," a name given to certain loamy deposits found in the basins of the Rhine, Danube, and other large rivers draining the Alps. But even supposing the human jaw therein discovered to belong to the same period as the bones of the elephants lying near to it, it might still, according to Sir Charles, "have no claims to a higher antiquity than the human remains which Dr. Schmerling disentombed from the Belgian caverns." The seventeenth and eighteenth chapters discuss Post-glacial Dislocations in Europe and in America, but supply no further facts relative to man. In the nineteenth, Sir Charles comes to his "Recapitulation of Geological Proofs of Man's Antiquity.' "And this"-to adopt the words of a writer" to whom the author is much indebted"And this is the chapter which must have been read with the keenest disappointment by those who anticipated a complete overthrow of the Mosaic narrative. It might have been entitled, like a chapter in a story of the last century, 'The conclusion, in which nothing is concluded."" But if it has no new facts it has the old fancies. Thus, e.g.,-"The vast distance of time which separated the origin of the higher and lower level gravels of the valley of the Somme, both of them rich in flint implements of similiar shape,. . . leads to the conclusion that the state of the arts in those early times remained stationary for almost indefinite periods."" And again: "We cannot ascertain at present the limits, whether of the beginning or the end, of the first stone period, when man coexisted with the extinct mammalia, but that it was of great duration we cannot "After investigating the circumstances on the spot, Sir Charles thought it quite possible that this relic might have "been dislodged out of some old Indian grave near the top of an adjacent cliff." See "Lyell's Second Visit to the United States," ii. 197.) "Lyell's Antiq. ch. xvi, p. 340. 32 In the "Christian Observer," vol. xxvi, p. 353. 33 Antiq. of Man, ch. xix., p. 376. RATE OF THE GROWTH OF PEAT. 213 doubt. "Cannot doubt," indeed! cannot we though? when we review the thoroughly hypothetical foundation for such affirmative conclusions, we cannot help doubting. For when we review that foundation what do we find? We find "calculations," "conjectures," " suppositions," "conclusions," anything, everything, but the one thing, which if it alone were present or producible, all the rest might be dispensed with. Of plain, strong, indisputable facts, there is not one. "A human skeleton, found in such circumstances as to force all geologists to admit that it must have lain there for 20,000 years, would be a perplexing difficulty for one who wished to maintain his belief in the narratives of Moses. But no such thing has been discovered. The crust of the earth has been examined in a thousand places; hundreds of eager investigators have striven to gain the glory of a great discovery; but the one thing of which they were all in search, remains at this moment undiscovered." To come to particulars : I. The Danish peat is at least 4000 years old (we are informed), and may be "four times" as much. MAY be: ah! then it also may NOT be. When Old Hundred's boast of the Gordon equipage with eight horses, was contradicted as a gross exaggeration, the only producible substantiation was the decisive rejoinder, "You say much more, I'll make sixteen on 'em!" If we humbly submit that the 4000 years claimed for this Danish peat is after all in no respect subversive of Scripture, we are warned to take care lest our opponents make sixteen of them. But waving the consideration of the 16,000 years which may be, what shall we say of the 4000 years which (according to Sir Charles) must be required. Why, we say in the words of another eminent geologist, that "These assumptions are quite at variance with the statements of the same writer in his 'Principles of Geology.' In treating in that work of the recent origin of peat mosses, he quotes the case of Hatfield moss in Yorkshire, which appears clearly to have been a forest 1800 years ago; and after giving other instances, states that 'a consider 34 Ibid., p. 378. able portion of the peat in European peat-bogs is evidently not more ancient than the age of Julius Cæsar,' and, what is most material to the present inquiry, quotes from Gerard, the historian of the valley of the Somme, a statement that in the lowest tier of that moss was found a boat loaded with bricks.""" Mr Pattison adds that "In the Philosophical Transactions,' No. 330, the Earl of Cromarty records that in the west of Ross-shire a considerable extent of land was, between the years 1651 and 1699, changed from a forest into a peat-moss, from which turf was cut.” "The frequent discoveries of medieval objects low down in fen deposits, and the experience of all those who have had to do with the management of peat-land, lead to the conclusion that two thousand years constitute ample allowance for the growth of all the peat on the present surface of the globe. II. With respect to the periods of iron, bronze, and stone, it is to be observed First that the highest dates here assigned are not irreconcileable with the Scripture chronology. But Secondly these high dates cannot be sustained. "The eminent Danish archaeologist, Worsaae," attributes to the stone period "an antiquity of at least three thousand years;" and adds, "There are also geological reasons for believing that the bronze period must have prevailed in Denmark five or six hundred years before the birth of Christ."" So that here we have only three thousand instead of the five, six, or seven thousand, offered us by Sir Charles. : Thirdly On what sort of data do these high "conclusions' rest? M. Morlot: "ASSUMING the Roman period to represent M. Troyon: "ASSUMING the lake to have retreated Sir Charles himself: "ASSUMING that a similar rate of the conversion of water into land prevailed antecedently. . . ." And yet we are expected to accept the conclusions from all this "The Antiquity of Man; an Examination of Sir Charles Lyell's recent Work. By S. R. Pattison, F.G.S. London: Reeve, 1863." To verify the quotation see Sir Charles Lyell's "Principles," 7th 36 Ibid., See Worsaae more at large in Mr. Pattison's "Examination." |