truth of the Bible has not been disproved as to the fact of creation, it most certainly has with respect to its date. We ask for the grounds of this assertion; and we are favored with a good many more assertions; but of indisputable proofs, not one. Professor Huxley offers us a crushing argument;" but it rests on a number of "ifs." Mr. Darwin's conclusions would be more formidable if his premises were less conjectural. But where is the force of saying-as in the very turning points of his argument he is continually saying "I can hardly doubt," "I can easily believe," "We may suppose," &c., &c.? No one doubts Mr. Darwin's power of supposing. Sir Charles Lyell tells us of "a vast lapse of ages separating the era in which the fossil implements were formed and that of the invasion of Gaul by the Romans." But what are his proofs? The time required for the growth of peat? Well: but that time (4000 years) is not quite enough to constitute the proof of “a vast lapse of ages!" Oh! but it "may have been four times as much." May have been :" is this the best proof that the prosecution is able to produce? Even so, their witness does not agree together. For Sir Charles himself had previously taught us that Hatfield Moss was "clearly" "a forest 1800 years ago; that "a considerable portion of the peat in European peatbogs is evidently not more ancient than the age of Julius Cæsar;" and, worst of all, in the lowest tier of that moss in the valley of the Somme, was found a boat loaded with bricks! Could anything be more unfortunate! except indeed, the damage done to Sir Charles's calculations of " the stone period" by that cork plug in the canoe at Glasgow.

Are we pointed to the evidence derived from the discoveries in the valley of the Somme? Then we answer in the words of "The Athenæum "There is one defect in it which cannot be overlooked, and this is the absence of human bones in the alluvium. Amongst thousands of flint implements and knives scattered through the alluvial sand and gravel of the Somme, not a single human bone has yet been found. This demands consideration, especially when the objection is strengthened by the like dearth of the mortal remains of our species in all other parts of Europe where the tool-bearing drift of the post-pliocene period in valley deposits has been investigated.

UNTENABILITY OF OBJECTIONS.

301

What can be the cause of this deficiency? Not the greater destructibility of human than of other animal bones, for Cuvier pointed out long ago that men's bones were not more decayed than those of horses in ancient battle-fields; and in the Liége cavern, as above mentioned, human skulls, jaws, teeth, and other bones were found in the same condition as those of the cave-bear, tiger, and mammoth. It is strange, therefore, that while within the last twenty-five years thousands of mammalian bones from post-pliocene alluvium have been submitted to skilful osteologists, they have been unable to detect amongst these one fragment of a human skeleton, or even a tooth. A really satisfactory answer to this objection has not yet come before us." We repeat: "It is strange;" it does "demand consideration;" that to this objection, thus strengthened, no really satisfactory answer has yet been found.

Shall we be told that such bones have been found? Then we refer to Dr. Falconer" for proof of the fraud practised upon the finder; to M. Elie de Beaumont for disproof of the alleged antiquity of the embedding deposit; and to Mr. Prestwich for the final conclusion-not that man is more ancient, but onlythat the mammoth is more recent than had been supposed.

This paucity of human remains, and in many cases, their entire absence when they have been most eagerly looked for, is elaborately extenuated by Sir Charles Lyell. He seems however to be by no means satisfied with his own apology, for he adds "that ere long, now that curiosity has been so much excited on this subject, some human remains will be detected in the older alluvium of European valleys, I confidently expect." Now, without saying that there seems but small

ground for the confidence of this expectation, let us suppose it to be justified. Let us forget that half a century of geological progress, marked by eager researches and fruitful discoveries, is just as far as ever from having found the fossil man that is to overthrow the Bible. Instead of finding human remains in cave-deposits where, by our adversaries' admission, they prove nothing, let us imagine them to have been found where they have been so eagerly and so vainly sought for, among the flintimplements in the valley of the Somme. And, to give the argument all the weight of numbers, suppose them to be found not in tiny fragments of an individual skeleton, but in the serried ranks of the battle-field or the burial-ground. What would be the worth of the argument after all? If these muchcoveted human bones were actually forthcoming-in the desired position, and in the required numbers—what then? Why, just this that for all the purposes of argument they would be as ineffective and ridiculous as the fossil man of Guadaloupe. They could not prove the nature of the embedding deposit. They could not prove its age. They could not prove its right to be regarded as "diluvium." Nor could they furnish a particle of evidence in disproof of the declaration of one of the most eminent geologists living, "that the Moulin Quignon beds are not 'diluvium;' they are not even alluvia, but are simply composed of washed soil, deposited on the flanks of the valley by excessive falls of rain," and instead of indicating “a vast series of antecedent ages," they are not older than the "stone-period," the peat mosses, or the lake dwellings of Switzerland. So that the argument founded on these bones (though the bones are not found yet) is equally conclusive and final with the famous definition of a crab, agreed upon by the

94

these discussions; for in this conglomerate, thus lying far below a river's bed, there appeared some coins of Edward I."-Archæological Journal, vol. vii.; quoted in Christian Observer, vol. lxii., p. 359. See also Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, vol. xvi.,

93

MR. LEONARD HORNER'S DISCOVERY.

Academy of Sciences.

303

"Crab: a red fish that walks backward." "Admirable ! gentlemen (replies M. Dupin); but for the trifling circumstance that a crab is not a fish-that it is not red-and that it does not walk backward-your definition would be absolutely perfect!" Such precisely, is the predicament of this famous argument for "a vast series of antecedent ages." "These bones are of the age alleged, for they are found in diluvium, and diluvium is of that age." Most conclusive, gentlemen; but for the trifling circumstance that they are not found in diluvium, and that diluvium is not of that age.

If anything can be more absurd than this, it is the pretended age of the diluvium. First, that age is attributed to it because of the utter absence of human remains, But when at last human remains are found in it, the presence of those remains is assumed as evidence of an age which was originally assigned on the ground of their absence! If as geologists have all along maintained-the absence of human remains did prove the high antiquity of the deposit; then-on their own principles-the presence of those remains now proves its recency: and their argument is turned against themselves.

But they have another string to their bow, and triumphantly they twang it. Mr. Leonard Horner actually produced from the sediment of the Nile, a piece of pottery by which he proved, to his own satisfaction and that of his admirer Baron Bunsen, "that man had existed in Egypt more than 11,000 years before the Christian era; and not merely existed, but had advanced in civilization so far as to know and practice the art of forming vessels of clay, and hardening them by fire." He had no proof that the specimen produced was actually found at the spot indicated that he was not the victim of a fraud for the profit of his workmen (like the trading on credulity practised at Abbeville)—that the specimen was not dropped into the old bed of the river, long after its diversion eastwards at the founding of Memphis-that it had not fallen into one of "the fissures into which the dry land is rent in summer, and which are so deep that many of them cannot be fathomed even by a palm branch" —that the site was not formerly one of the innumerable wells, from which water was raised by means of earthern pots-nor even that the Nile-deposit began to accumulate on that site be

fore the fifth century of our era. But the greater the lack of evidence, the greater the room for guessing. To a man like Bunsen, requiring "twenty millenia" for the development of language, this piece of old pot was a perfect godsend. It required no such troublesome process as the alteration of the monumental inscriptions, the mutilation of Manetho, and the vilifying of Eusebius; it only required-puffing. So he did puff it-vigorously, in these words:

"The operation performed, and the result obtained, are historical, not geological. The soil which has been penetrated is exclusively historical soil, coeval with mankind, and underlies a monument the date of which can be fixed with all desirable certainty. It is a soil accumulated at the same spot, by the same uninterrupted, regular, infallible agency of that river, which, like the whole country through which it flows, is a perfect chronometer. It is an agency evidently [!] undisturbed by any other agency, during these more than a hundred centutries, by flood or by deluge, by elevation or by depression. The fertilizing sediment is found in its place throughout.'

But alas for this "historical soil," this "perfect chronometer." Mr. Horner's own hand has shown-most unwittingly indeed, but most unmistakeably-that the soil was, after all, unhistorical, and the chronometer fatally imperfect. For "he tells us that fragments of burnt brick and of pottery have been found at even greater depths in localities near the banks of the river,' and that in the boring at Sigeul, fragments of burnt brick and pottery were found in the sediment brought up from between the fortieth and fiftieth foot from the surface.' Now, if a coin of Trajan or Diocletian had been discovered in these spots, even Mr. Horner would have been obliged to admit that he had made a fatal mistake in his conclusions: but a piece of burnt brick found beneath the soil tells the same tale that a Roman coin would tell under the same circumstances. Mr. Horner and M. Bunsen have, we believe, never been in Egypt; and we therefore take the liberty to inform them that there is not a single known structure of burnt brick from one end of Egypt to the other, earlier than the period of the Roman

95 Egypt's Place in Universal History: vol. iii., Pref. p. xxvi.