It was thought by the venerable Perronet, the vicar of Shoreham, that "Methodism was designed to introduce the millennium." If that sublime vision of her destiny is realized, her local ministry are to share in the labors required for it, and to participate in its coming glory. We have no doubt whatever, that this great branch of evangelical Protestantism is prepared in her machinery, under God, for this work and this glory. God forbid, that by a failure to employ our mighty resources, we should come short of either!

ART. V.—REVIEW OF SIR CHARLES LYELL ON THE "ANTIQUITY OF MAN."

FOR thirty-five years the writer of this article has been wandering over the continent of North America in the character of an Indian missionary, studying Indian languages and natural phenomena. In this character he has explored the region from Texas to Hudson's Bay; has traced more rivers than almost any other man, and has devoted special attention to their laws of change and general phenomena. Fluviology, river-study, is as much a science as geology or botany, and as much worthy of a niche in the great temple of human knowledge by itself. It is from this source mainly we purpose to draw our evidences of the recent origin of the present order of things.

Sir C. Lyell, on page 205, expresses the opinion that it is possible to "render the delta of the Mississippi available as a chronometer by which the lapse of post-pliocene time could be measured." In this opinion we most fully concur.

Mr. Darwin, in his work on the "Origin of Species," allows us to suppose that fourteen hundred millions of generations. of animal life have passed since its first creation on our globe. And Sir C. Lyell and others inform us that their discoveries justify the conclusion that North America has been peopled by man fifty or even one hundred thousand or more years.

I. THE PEAT BOGS OF DENMARK.

On page 16 of Mr. Lyell's work we find an account of some peat bogs in Denmark in which, at a great depth, forest trees and the works of man have been found in such positions as is supposed to justify the inference that Denmark has been peopled by man for a period of from four thousand to sixteen thousand or more years. It must be borne in mind that these peat bogs are all formed in hollows in the drift forma- . tion, and that man existed before the drift. The bones and works of man are found mixed promiscuously with vast amounts of the bones of extinct races of animals, as well as of those that still exist.

The peat bogs of Denmark show three changes in forest vegetation. Near the bottom of the bogs are found Scotch firs, and the works of man; above these, oaks are found, and the works of man showing an advance in civilization; and above all beech trees are found, which is almost the only tree now indigenous in Denmark. It is argued that, to produce this growth of peat and these several changes in the entire forest vegetation, it requires a vast lapse of time and great changes in the climate.

In hundreds of places in the northern part of our continent I have seen these changes in the forest vegetation. In the very nature of things, it is impossible for these old fir forests to remain for many ages. The moss that always accumulates on the trees and on the ground in these gloomy forests, impervious to sun or wind, and the rosin that exudes and accumulates on the trees, will, in time, insure their destruction by fire just as certainly as the prairies are thus consumed. I have often seen these old forests burning, sometimes a whole hill or mountain-side enveloped in one sheet of flame. After their destruction we invariably found another species of tree occupying the vacant space. In this way the destruction of the fir forests of Denmark and the substitution of the oak can be accounted for in one hundred years.

Sir Charles Lyell informs us there were a few oaks and beech trees mixed with the firs from the beginning. Suppose then during a very dry season a fire swept through these old forests of fir, it would destroy them with all their cones

containing seeds, and as this class of trees never send up shoots from the roots, the whole would be destroyed. Not so, however, the oak, for it will almost invariably send up shoots from the roots. In the prairies of the West we have counted as many as fifty times where the oak and hickory have been destroyed by fire, and would start up again from the roots before the struggle for life was over: consequently no conebearing trees can live in this region, except in inaccessible cliff's beyond the reach of fire. In the northern parts of our continent, where beech, oak, and hickory cannot grow, we find as soon as the firs are destroyed that poplar and birch immediately occupy the vacant ground. But in a country of mountains, bogs, and lake, the fire cannot destroy all the firs. So, in time, a few firs are seen struggling up through the poplars and birches, and in time supersede them, to be again destroyed and renewed as before. But in a flat open country like Denmark, the firs once destroyed would have no chance of renewal. We give it as our opinion that no thick forests of fir can exist in our northern hemisphere for five hundred years without being destroyed by fire. If, then, the firs ceased in Denmark five hundred years after the close of the drift period, how long would it require for the beech to supersede the oak? After the fire had destroyed the firs, the oak would most readily take its place, and get the start of the beech; because of its greater tenacity of life it would send up shoots from the roots, while both the oak and beech would have a start from the stores of beech nuts and acorns hibernating animals had hid away in the ground or hollow trees. The contest would now be between the oak and the beech, and a very few centuries would determine it, soil and climate being more favorable to one than the other. Thus we see from the rate of changes at present going on in our own country, that all the changes of forest vegetation in Denmark since the drift period may easily be accounted for in one thousand five hundred years. Nothing but beech has been known in Denmark since the historic period, and the firs, oak, and beech occupy spaces in the bogs corresponding to the periods they severally predominated. None of these peat bogs, as far as we recollect, are over thirty or forty feet deep. Mr. T. Sterry Hunt, Assistant Provincial Geologist in Canada West, has made the statement, based

on careful examination, that these peat bogs will produce ten times as much vegetable matter in a given time as our common forests. It is estimated that if all the timber on our common forests was compressed into coal, it would make a layer of about one inch all over the ground. This we may suppose would represent the growth of from one to two hundred years. Were our deepest peat bogs compressed and converted into coal according to the above estimates, we would find it difficult to carry back the close of the drift period beyond four or five thousand years.

The Black Forest of Germany has changed three times in the historic period: first fir, then oak, and now fir again. From such very uncertain data is the attempt made to carry back the human period far beyond the Mosaic record!

II. THE NILE POTTERY.

Another fact relied on to prove the great antiquity of man, is the old pottery and other works of art found deep down in the sediment of the Nile. Without going into facts or figures, it will be sufficient to state that the sediment brought down by the annual floods, and deposited all over the lower valley of the Nile, amounts somewhere to about two and a half or three inches in a century, so that what was the surface of the soil in the days of Moses will now be some eight feet below. In digging and boring wells, works of art have been found as far down as seventy-two feet below the present surface, from which it is inferred that Egypt has been inhabited by man thirty thousand years.

Let it be borne in mind that the Nile, like the Ganges, Mississippi, Missouri, and other large rivers of this class, has its lower course through a region of soft sediment deposited from its own waters. All such rivers, unless artificial means are used to prevent it, are constantly wearing away on one side, and depositing sediment on the other, thus keeping all such rivers of a uniform breadth. The laws that govern this constant shifting of the channel are easily explained. In times of flood, especially, wherever the current impinges strongly against a bank it will cut away on that side, but at the same time an equivalent for this loss will be found in the depositions in the

eddy on the opposite side; thus, first one side then the other is cut away and filled up, so that in the course of time these curves chase each other down stream. I have traversed rivers where these ever-receding curves reminded me of the appearance of an auger in boring, where the curves appear to chase each other perpetually. As most of the large rivers of our globe are underlaid with sand, a tide of which is constantly rolled along the bed of the stream, and constantly accumulating simultaneously with the deposition of sediment in times of flood on the adjoining bottom lands, in the course of a few centuries the river really runs on a ridge of sand, with banks of soft clay or mud on each side. Like a man trying to walk on the track of a railroad, he now slips off on this side and then on that, so all these rivers slip off from this ridge of sand, and as the adjoining clay or mud banks are more easily cut and carried away than the sand, this accounts for the fact that these rivers are uniformly deepest in the parts newly cut away; so that a work of art lost in one of these newly formed deep places, in the course of a few centuries may be found far from the river, and deeply imbedded in river mud.

The city of Booneville in Missouri was first built on the north bank, but the river left the town, having made a turn toward the south side of the valley. The inhabitants followed up the river, and built on the alluvial banks. But the town had not made much advancement before the channel changed again, and this time close to the south side, where the banks or bluffs come sloping down to the alluvial plain, and here Booneville still remains, and all this in less than fifty years.

The great flood of 1844 carried away a whole section of land near Kansas City, belonging to one Colonel Chick.

Those who have traveled on our great Western rivers will often have seen a man with the lead sounding the depth where shoals are apprehended. The line used is nine fathoms. In the distance of a mile the depth may vary from one to nine or more fathoms. When the lead does not touch the bottom the man would sing out, "No bottom, no bottom." The bell would then ring, and all steam would be put on again. Now the Nile is a stream of precisely the same character as the Missouri or Mississippi. Suppose in the early days of the settlement of Egypt, old pottery, bricks, and other works of art