suggested is, that the said bones are 10,000 years old; but the truth is, they were imbedded in this calcareous conglomerate, and fossilized, in the same manner and by the same causes which operated to produce the stone man of Gaudaloupe, as well as the fossil remains of Santos, and are, probably, of more recent origin.

The remainder of this chapter is occupied in speculations regarding the assumed upheaval of the post-tertiary strata of part of Scotland, Cornwall, Sweden and Norway. It contains nothing that has any direct bearing on the question of man's age, though it indirectly suggests and insinuates his great antiquity. It furnishes, however, a very valuable argument to show the unsoundness of inferences which are frequently drawn in the subsequent part of the book, and exhibits, forcibly, what slender foundations our author requires for his generalizations and speculations in regard to time.

The fact that the sea has retired from the East and West coasts of Scotland, leaving bare a deposit of estuarine silt, on the margin of the present estuaries of the Forth and Clyde, is accounted for by a supposed upheaval of twenty-five feet, in the central district of the country, though it may have been due to another cause. According to Lyell, this upheaval was gradual and insensible, though he admits it may have been intermittent; and yielding to the force of Mr. Geikie's reasoning, he also concedes that the greater part, if not the whole of the elevation, has occurred since the Roman wall of Antoninus was built across this district. Buried in the silted sand and clay of the old coast line, there have been found, during the last eighty years, seventeen boats or canoes, an iron anchor, and other implements of iron, several skeletons of whales, with some pointed instruments of deer's horn. All the boats were found along the margin of the Clyde at Glasgow, five of them under the streets of the city, and twelve, a hundred yards back from the river. "In one of the canoes, a beautifully polished celt or axe of green stone was found; in the bottom of another, a plug of cork."* Most of these boats were canoes, hewed out of a single log, with different degrees of skill, but

*This cork could only have been brought from Spain, or other countries occupied by the Romans.

two of them were built with planks, one of which, having the beak of an antique galley, and a stern like those of our own day, was "very elaborately constructed," having the planks fastened to ribs, with oaken pins, and "nails of some kind of metal." These are the facts, and our author immediately applies them to the corroboration of his inevitable hypothesis of successive chronological ages. He speculates thus :-"Nearly all these ancient boats were formed out of a single oak stem hollowed out by blunt tools, probably stone axes, aided by the action of fire; a few were cut beautifully smooth, evidently with metallic tools." And he then jumps to the conclusion that "There can be no doubt that some of these buried vessels are of far more ancient date than others. Those most roughly hewn may be relics of the stone period; those more smoothly cut, of the bronze age; and the regularly built boat of Bankton may perhaps come within the age of iron." To meet the objection that all of them were found in the same deposit, huddled together within a very circumscribed area, he tells us that this "fact by no means implies that they belong to the same era," because in such deposits "there are changes continually in progress, brought about by the deposition, removal, and redeposition of gravel, &c." He enforces this point by a long quotation from M. Geikie, going to prove that in transported and shifted deposits, juxtaposition is no proof of contemporaneous age, but that the most ancient relics may be found in contact with others of comparatively recent origin. We accept this statement as entirely correct; and the value of it will be seen when we come to consider the inferences which our author draws from human relics found in juxtaposition with the bones of extinct animals.

To a practical observer, having no hobbies to ride, the above difference in these boats, instead of proving successive ages and races of men, would simply indicate difference of skill on the part of the rude inhabitants, during that era which immediately preceded and succeeded the Roman occupation of their country. Precisely similar differences may this day be seen on hundreds of bayous, creeks, and small rivers, on our southern coast, or on the far western tributaries of the Mississippi and Missouri. We may now see, side by side, the rude "dug-out"

of the negro, with its stone anchor tied with a hickory withe; the better hewed canoe of the white man; and the skiff of the Indian; the plank scow of the plantation, with its big brass padlock (proof of a bronze age); and occasionally a regularly built row boat, with its iron anchor. If any one of the numerous streams, whose whole marine is of this description, should be silted up, as they frequently are by change of channel during excessive freshets, or by other causes which are continually working changes, and after seventeen centuries should be reopened, some future Lyell would find proof infinitely stronger than any which this book contains, of three successive ages of stone, bronze, and iron. Should he have the same powers of generalization as our author, he might, like him, point to a solitary "small, round, and very thick skull" of the negro, then to the more "elongated form and larger size" of that of the Indian, and lastly to a solitary cranium of a buried white man, in proof that three distinct races of men successively dwelt on the banks of this little river, and during countless ages advanced progressively from barbarism to civilization. This is precisely what the present Lyell aims to prove by evidence far less strong than the above data would give him.

upon

As a believer in Revelation, we plead no religious scruples in opposition to Lyell's doctrine. But as a believer in the truth of Science, we are decidedly opposed to receiving it such evidence as he offers. Science deals with facts, not fancies. Only let him prove the truth of his hypothesis in regard to man's beginning on this earth, and we will adopt it; in the mean time, we hold it reasonable to suppose that no one but the Creator can reveal the secret of man's original state and the time of his creation.

We have not yet quite finished with this third chapter. The author, following his usual practice throughout the book, seeks, at the conclusion of the chapter, to establish from the geological record some fixed data in regard to man's existence. By supposing and assuming, he makes some shells on a hill, 600 feet high, on the coast of Norway, to be just 24,000 years old, but he cannot find there any human relic. The upheaval of the deposit in Scotland, in which the boats were found, he admits "may have been subsequent to the Roman occupation."

66

But," ," he adds, "the twenty-five feet rise is only the last stage of a long antecedent process of elevation;" for, as he goes on to tell us," Mr. Smith of Jordenhill informs [him] that a rude ornament, made of cannel coal," has been found on the coast fifty feet above the water, among some gravel containing marine shells, which prove that this land was once covered by the sea.

On the strength solely of this information from Mr. Smith, he proceeds to establish the age of this marine sand hill, for the purpose of deducing from it the age of this ornament, which he assumes to be an ancient relic. He says:

"If we suppose the upward movement to have been uniform in central Scotland before and after the Roman age, and assume that as twenty-five feet indicate seventeen centuries, so fifty feet imply a lapse of twice that number, or 3400 years, we should then carry back the date of the ornament in question to fifteen centuries before our era, or to the days of Pharaoh and the period usually assigned to the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt."—p. 55.

We cite the above as a fair specimen of the kind of evidence and style of argument adopted throughout this book to prove the antiquity of man. The only fact in this case, is, that a piece of cannel coal, a mineral of not very ancient discovery,* fashioned into a ring or some other rude ornament, such as boys, in a cannel coal district, delight to whittle out of that material, was found on the surface of a marine sand hill 50 feet high. What legitimate connection is there between the date of this work of art, and the supposed age of the hill on which it was dropped? It presents in itself no marks of antiquity except its rudeness, and had it been whittled out and lost by some truant school-boy, which is the most reasonable supposition, a very few seasons would have sufficed to cover it with the loose gravel and sand in which it was found. Yet the date of this cannel coal ornament is carried back by suppositions and assumptions to the days of Pharaoh, and offered as an argument to prove the immense antiquity of man! The inference suggested very palpably, though not stated, is, that the Scots had begun to mine coal, and had made some progress in the æsthetic arts at "the period usually assigned to the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt."

* A bituminous substance called ampelion, from its use by the Greeks and Romans to anoint vines, is supposed by some to have been a species of cannel coal.

We are justified in concluding, from this case, that if some other Mr. Smith of Norway had informed our Author that a similar ornament had been found on the surface of the first mentioned marine sand hill of 600 feet high, he would have considered this information proof of the existence of preAdamite 24,000 years ago, who had already advanced beyond the brutal state of the stone age, and also as furnishing evidence that the statements of Revelation in regard to the time of creation and original state of man are false.

Surely Napoleon uttered a profound truth when he said, "There are some men capable of believing every thing but the Bible."

Our limits will not permit us at present to continue the examination of this book; the part which we have already examined, is, we think, the strongest, and we have seen on what a slender foundation of facts the Author relies to support his assumptions in regard to the antiquity of man and his primeval state of brutal savagism. So far as we have advanced in it, we find nothing to excite, in the most timid mind, a reasonable doubt of the usual acceptation of the chronology of the Bible taken in its narrowest sense, although we consider such an acceptance of it open to reasonable doubt.

The book seems to be written with candor and frankness, for, in the prolixity of its details, it does not omit facts and opinions very damaging to the views entertained, and which would almost furnish, to an observant reader, the means requisite for their refutation. Yet the author writes under such an evident bias, and avails himself so readily of the most trivial facts to make out a case, that he is obnoxious to the severest criticism consistent with strict justice, and ought not to complain of a rigid and jealous scrutiny of his opinions.

Time and opportunity serving, we propose, on a future occasion, to pursue the analysis of this book to the end; then to turn the tables on these scientific skeptics, and show that the Bible, considered from a philosophical stand-point, is far more consonant with human reason than these "oppositions of science falsely so called," and vastly more entitled to belief than the fanciful hypotheses which have been offered as substitutes. "And this will we do, if God permit."