part of the railway section, and is just 32 feet above the level of the rails. So far as the size of this cone is concerned, the whole quantity of matter comprising it might have been deposited during a single season, by such extraordinary inundations as have been known to occur in that district in modern times. One which occurred so late as 1818, to which we will presently refer, deposited in a similar position a vastly greater amount of transported matter. But Lyell, in accordance with a theory which he has made a pet hobby, assumes "that it has been formed very gradually, and by the uniform action of the same causes." Let us see what evidence there is to support this assumption. We are informed that this deposit is composed of four gravel beds, separated by three intervening layers of soil. Taking the dimensions of these beds as stated, but reversing their order, the first or lowest deposit of gravel and sand brought down by the torrent, was thirteen feet thick, and on the top of this was found his primitive man of the so-called stone period. The next bed was nine feet thick, and this underlaid his assumed bronze period. The third bed was six feet thick, which reached up to his Roman iron period; while the last deposited bed of four feet, forms the present top of the cone. Now, whatever length of time may have elapsed between the deposition of the first and last of these beds, it is very certain that they could not all have been continuously deposited by the very gradual and uniform action of the river, as asserted. It is evident that this action must have been completely suspended, during three intervals of indefinite duration, in order to permit the formation of three successive layers of vegetable soil; otherwise the whole mass. would have been a homogeneous deposit of sand and gravel, undivided by these intervening layers. The facts of the case, therefore, forbid the assumption that this mass was formed gradually, by the continuous and uniform action of the river, but justify us in concluding that it was produced at intervals, and by extraordinary freshets. Again, on what authority does he make this isolated sand cone, washed down by a mountain torrent, and superimposed on the alluvial drift, which forms the very outer vestment of the earth, the theater of successive chronological ages of immense

duration? We admit that the Roman coin is proof that men existed at the time of, or subsequent to, the Roman invasion. But the only evidence that he has of the existence of a preceding bronze age, is a solitary bronze tweezers! Now this bronze instrument was in very common use at Rome, by men as well as women, and is just as good proof of a Roman iron age, as a copper or silver coin is. The only evidence he has of a primitive stone period, is a human skeleton, with a small, round and very thick skull. This round skull, by the bye, is quite different from the elongated one which was dredged out of this same Lake of Geneva, and which was made, as we have seen, the type of the lake dwellers of the stone period.

A thick, round skull, and a solitary bronze tweezers, found in a hillock of sandy gravel, washed down by a mountain torrent, are the only evidences to support our author's foregone conclusion of successive ages of stone and bronze. It is true, he speaks of "fragments of rude pottery," but broken pieces of pottery, however rude, without specific notes and marks, are valueless as determining the question of age. Pottery is the most universal as well as the earliest of the arts, and fragments of unglazed earthen ware, and the rudest pottery, may be found among civilized nations of modern date. Rudeness alone is no test of age. We doubt not that the coarse pottery used by Roman soldiers, after being smashed to fragments, and lying in the ground for 1800 years, would look rude enough to the eye of an archaeologist, to be assigned to the so-called stone period.

Upon what data does M. Morlot base his conjecture, that this assumed stone period is from 5,000 to 7,000 years old? We are informed that it rests on the assumption that the Roman period, indicated by the coin found four feet below the top of the cone, represents an antiquity of from sixteen to eighteen centuries. If so, the question is easily solved by the rule of three. If it takes 1,800 years to make 4 feet of deposit, how long would it take to make a deposit of 32 feet? But this calculation would give far greater antiquity than is claimed. Besides, it presupposes that the whole cone has been deposited continuously and uniformly, which assumption is proved to be

untenable, by the existence of intervening layers of soil. Nor is the calculation, founded on the thickness of these layers of soil and the probable time necessary for their formation, a whit more reliable. Facts prove that, in some cases, thousands of years are necessary to produce a thin covering of soil, while in others, a few hundred years are sufficient for the production of thick layers; and then again, in other cases, such layers have been formed, as it were, immediately. The sudden covering up of a rank vegetation by earthy matter, the overwhelming and subsequent decay of a forest, the soil and vegetable matter transported by an inundation, and then deposited, are all capable of producing immediately just such "layers of vegetable soil" as occur between the gravel beds deposited by the River Tinière. Herculaneum furnishes evidence which is decisive on this point. The date of its destruction is well known; and in regard to it, Sir William Hamilton remarks :—“ The matter which covers the ancient town of Herculaneum, is not the produce of one eruption only; for there are evident marks that the matter of six eruptions has taken its course over that which lies immediately above the town, and was the cause of its destruction. These strata are either of lava or burnt matter, with veins of good soil betwixt them."*

A geological observer, who is not wedded to this ultra theory of very gradual formation which ignores all catastrophes, and who is not committed to the hypothesis of a universal and inevitable succession of stone, bronze, and iron ages, finds no necessity for imagining periods of immense duration, in order to account for the formation of this deposit of gravel, from the effect of causes still operating in this same district. In 1818, the River Dranse, a mountain torrent similar to the Tinière, and which empties into the Rhone through the broad valley of Bagnes, became, in consequence of a succession of very cold winters, dammed up in its mountain gorges, with ice so thick as to resist the usual melting of the summer heat. A lake was thus formed near its source, containing 800 millions of cubic feet of water, held back by a dam of ice, which was liable to

* "Philosophical Transactions," Vol. LXI. p. 7.

give way at any moment, and overwhelm the cultivated plains below. To avert the impending calamity, M. Venetz was employed to tunnel the icy barrier. By means of an artificial gallery, a large portion of the water was gradually drawn off; but at length the dam gave way, and the lake was suddenly emptied of the remainder of the water. The mighty flood precipitated itself through a succession of gorges and basins, stripping the mountain sides of soil and forests, and lower down carrying off houses, barns and whole farms, with cattle and men; rising to the height of ninety feet above the bed of the Dranse, and threatening with instant destruction the inclined plane on which the large village of Le Chable is situated. The huge tide gathering fresh spoils at every step, and resembling a "moving chaos" of rock and mud, more than water, "continued its work of destruction till its fury became weakened by expanding itself over the great plain formed by the valley of the Rhone," and in six and a half hours it discharged itself into the Lake of Geneva. The engineer, M. Escher, in his Memoir of this event, informs us that a stratum of alluvial matter, several feet in thickness, was deposited over the whole of the lower part of the broad valley of Bagnes. Several other instances are on record, to prove that precisely the same cause has repeatedly produced similar results, in this same region. This cause furnishes a sufficient explanation of the fact that successive deposits at the mouth of the Tinière have been, at different intervals and in separate beds, piled up to the height of 32 feet above the lake, which never could have been accomplished by the ordinary, gradual and uniform deposition of the river, as Sir Charles Lyell contends. It is perfectly legitimate to conclude, that the same cause which has repeatedly produced extraordinary inundations in this district, attended with such remarkable results, as in the case of the Dranse, has also at other times similarly affected the Tinière, the conditions of both rivers being similar. We may infer that at different intervals, this latter mountain torrent has, also, from the same cause, in a less degree, and on a more circumscribed area, transported and deposited at its mouth, extraordinary quantities of alluvial matter; that the heavier parti

cles of gravel and sand have settled below, while the lighter earth and drift wood have formed over them the "layers of vegetable soil;" that successive beds have thus been added, by successive inundations; and that the whole mass has, in the course of time, been rounded by the elements into its present cone-like shape.

Nor is there any thing in the character of the relics contained in this mound, to forbid the conclusion that the whole deposit has been formed subsequent to the earliest Roman period. The first inundation buried the wild native, found in the lowest bed, while the subsequent ones swept up from some neighboring surface the bronze tweezer and the coin, both of which are equally good attestations of the Roman invader,

We have dwelt at some length on this Tinière deposit, because it seems one of the strongest cases in the book, and because it is a very fair sample of the manner by which, in every chapter, assumptions and opinions are made to take the place of evidence and reason, in order to establish foregone conclusions.

Chapter III. treats, under separate heads, of "fossil human remains, and works of art," found in the Nile mud, in ancient mounds of the valley of the Ohio, and in the Delta of the Mississippi; of recent deposits of seas and lakes, and of the upheaval of Scotland, and other districts. Under each of these heads, Lyell gives numerous opinions and assumptions, to establish the immense antiquity of man.

Under the first head, he inculcates the peculiarly ultra views and very unreliable opinions of Mr. Leonard Horner. This gentleman induced the Royal Society to contribute funds toward some experiments he was desirous of making in the Nile valley. He intrusted the work to an Armenian engineer, Hekekyan Bey, who employed some sixty Arabs to dig shafts sixteen to twenty-four feet deep, and to bore Artesian holes sixty to seventy feet deep. In the first case, some "jars, vases, pots, and a small human figure in burnt clay, a copper knife, and other entire articles were dug up." From the borings, "pieces of burnt brick and pottery were extracted almost every where, and from all depths, even where they sank sixty feet below the