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JAMES K.MOFFITT 
 
 PAULINE FORE MOFFITT 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 GENERAL LIBRARY, BERKELEY 
 
 University of California Berkeley 
 

 i 
 
 
THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 PRINCIPLES of GEOLOG-Y ; or, the MODERN CHANGES of 
 the EAETH and its INHABITANTS, as illustrative of Geology. 9th Edition. 
 Woodcuts, 8vo., 18s. 
 
 ELEMENTS of GEOLOGY ; or, the ANCIENT CHANGES of 
 the EABTH and its INHABITANTS, as illustrated by its Geological Monuments. 
 6th Edition, revised. Woodcuts. 8vo. \In preparation. 
 
 A FIRST and SECOND VISIT to NORTH AMERICA, 
 
 CANADA, NOVA SCOTIA, &c. : with GEOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS. 2nd 
 Edition. Maps. 4 vols. Post 8vo. 24. 
 

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THE GEOLOGICAL EVIDENCES 
 
 OF 
 
 THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN 
 
 WITH KEMABKS ON THEORIES OF 
 
 THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES BY VARIATION 
 
 BY Sffi CHAELES LYELL, F.E.S. 
 
 AUTHOR OF 'PRINCIPLES OP GEOLOGY,' 'ELEMENTS OF GEOLOGY,' ETC. ETC. 
 
 ILLUSTRATED BY WOODCUTS 
 
 LONDON 
 
 JOHN MUEEAY, ALBEMARLE STREET 
 1863 
 
 The right or translation is reserved 
 
LONDON 
 
 PBINTEU BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO. 
 NEW-STKEET SQUABB 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Preliminary Remarks on the Subjects treated of in this "Work Definition of 
 the Terms Recent, Post-Pliocene, and Post-Tertiary Tabular View of the 
 entire Series of Fossiliferous Strata ,-/.<* . . . PAGE 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 RECENT PERIOD DANISH PEAT AND SHELL MOUNDS SWISS LAKE 
 
 DWELLINGS. 
 
 Works of Art in Danish Peat-Mosses Remains of three Periods of Vegetation 
 in the Peat Ages of Stone, Bronze, and Iron Shell-Mounds or ancient 
 Refuse-Heaps of the Danish Islands Change in geographical Distribution 
 of Marine Mollusca since their Origin Embedded Remains of Mammalia 
 of recent Species Human Skulls of the same Period Swiss LaEe-Dwel- 
 lings built on Piles Stone and Bronze Implements found in them Fossil 
 Cereals and other Plants Remains of Mammalia, wild and domesticated 
 No extinct Species Chronological Computations of the Date of the Bronze 
 and Stone Periods in Switzerland Lake-Dwellings, or artificial Islands 
 called ' Crannoges,' in Ireland ./->.. . ' v '. 8 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 FOSSIL HUMAN REMAINS AND WORKS OF ART OF THE RECENT PERIOD. 
 
 Delta and Alluvial Plain of the Nile Burnt Bricks in Egypt before the Roman 
 Era Borings in 1851-54 Ancient Mounds of the Valley of the Ohio 
 Their Antiquity Sepulchral Mound at Santos in Brazil Delta of the 
 Mississippi Ancient Human Remains in Coral Reefs of Florida Changes in 
 Physical Geography in the Human Period Buried Canoes in marine Strata 
 near Glasgow Upheaval since the Roman Occupation of the Shores of the 
 Firth of Forth Fossil Whales near Stirling Upraised marine Strata of 
 Sweden on Shores of the Baltic and the Ocean Attempts to compute their 
 Age. v 33 
 
yi CONTEXTS. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 POST-PLIOCENE PERIOD 
 
 BONES OF MAN AND EXTINCT MAMMALIA IN BELGIAN CAVERNS. 
 
 Earliest Discoveries in Caves of Languedoc of Human Remains with Bones of 
 extinct Mammalia Researches in 1833 of Dr. Schmerling in the Liege 
 Caverns Scattered Portions of Human Skeletons associated with Bones of 
 Elephant and Rhinoceros Distribution and probable Mode of Introduction 
 of the Bones Implements of Flint and Bone Schmerling' s Conclusions as 
 to the Antiquity of Man ignored Present State of the Belgian Caves 
 Human Bones recently found in Cave of Engihoul Engulfed Rivers 
 Stalagmitic Crust Antiquity of the Human Remains in Belgium how 
 proved PAGE 59 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 POST-PLIOCENE PERIOD 
 FOSSIL HUMAN SKULLS OF THE NEANDERTHAL AND ENGIS CAVES. 
 
 Human Skeleton found in Cave near Diisseldorf Its geological Position and 
 probable Age Its abnormal and ape-like Characters Fossil Human Skull 
 of the Engis Cave near Liege Professor Huxley's Description of these 
 Skulls Comparison of each, with extreme Varieties of the native Austra 
 lian Race Range of Capacity in the Human and Simian Brains Skull from 
 Borrebyin Denmark Conclusions of Professor Huxley Bearing of the 
 peculiar Characters of the Neanderthal Skull on the Hypothesis of Transmu 
 tation 75 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 POST-PLIOCENE ALLUVIUM AND CAVE DEPOSITS WITH FLINT 
 IMPLEMENTS. 
 
 General Position of Drift with extinct Mammalia in Valleys Discoveries of 
 M. Boucher de Perthes- at Abbeville Flint Implements found also at 
 St. Acheul, near Amiens Curiosity awakened by the systematic Explora 
 tion of the Brixham Cave Flint Knives in same, with Bones of extinct 
 Mammalia Superposition of Deposits in the Cave Visits of English and 
 French Geologists to Abbeville and Amiens . . . . 93 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 PEAT AND POST-PLIOCENE ALLUVIUM OF THE VALLEY OF THE SOMME. 
 
 Geological Structure of the Valley of the Somme and of the surrounding 
 Country Position of Alluvium of different Ages Peat near Abbeville 
 Its animal and vegetable Contents Works of Art in Peat Probable 
 Antiquity of the Peat, and Changes of Level since its Growth began Flint 
 Implements of antique Type in older Alluvium Their various Forms and 
 great Numbers i . 106 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 POST-PLIOCENE ALLUVIUM WITH FLINT IMPLEMENTS OF THE VALLEY 
 
 OF THE SOMME concluded. 
 
 Fluvio-marine Strata, with Flint Implements, near Abbeville Marine Shells in 
 same Cyrena Fluminalis Mammalia Entire Skeleton of Rhinoceros 
 Flint Implements, why found low down in Fluviatile Deposits Rivers 
 shifting their Channels Relative Ages of higher and lower-level Gravels 
 Section of Alluvium of St. Acheul Two Species of Elephant and Hippopo 
 tamus coexisting with Man in France Volume of Drift, proving Antiquity 
 of Flint Implements Absence of Human Bones in tool-bearing Alluvium, 
 how explained Value of certain Kinds of negative Evidence tested thereby 
 Human Bones not found in drained Lake of Haarlem . . PAGE 121 
 
 CHAPTER IK 
 
 WORKS OF ART IN POST-PLIOCENE ALLUVIUM OF FEANCE AND 
 ENGLAND. 
 
 Flint Implements in ancient Alluvium of the Basin of the Seine Bones of Man 
 and of extinct Mammalia in the Cave of Arcy Extinct Mammalia in the 
 Valley of the Oise Flint Implement in Gravel of same Valley Works of 
 Art in Post-Pliocene Drift in Valley of the Thames Musk Buffalo Meeting 
 of northern and southern Fauna Migrations of Quadrupeds Mammals of 
 Amoor Land Chronological Relation of the older Alluvium of the Thames 
 to the Glacial Drift Flint Implements of Post-Pliocene Period in Surrey, 
 Middlesex, Kent, Bedfordshire, and Suffolk. . ', ' . 150 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 CAVERN DEPOSITS, AND PLACE OF SEPULTURE OF THE POST-PLIOCENE 
 
 PERIOD. 
 
 Flint Implements in Cave containing Hysena and other extinct Mammalia in 
 Somersetshire Caves of the Gower Peninsula in South Wales Rhinoceros 
 hemitoechus Ossiferous Caves near Palermo Sicily once part of Africa 
 Rise of Bed of the Mediterranean to the Height of three hundred Feet in the 
 Human Period in Sardinia Burial Place of Post-Pliocene Date of Aurignac 
 in the South of France Rhinoceros tichorhinus eaten by Man M. Lartet 
 on extinct Mammalia and Works of Art found in the Aurignac Cave 
 Relative Antiquity of the same, considered 170 
 
Vlll CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 AGE OF HUMAN FOSSILS OF LE PUT IN CENTRAL FRANCE AND OF 
 NATCHEZ ON THE MISSISSIPPI, DISCUSSED. 
 
 Question as to the Authenticity of the Fossil Man of Denise, near Le Puy-en- 
 Velay, considered Antiquity of the Human Race implied by that Fossil 
 Successive Periods of volcanic Action in Central France "With what 
 Changes in the Mammalian Fauna they correspond The Elephas Meridio- 
 nalis anterior in Time to the implement-bearing Gravel of St. Acheul 
 Authenticity of the Human Fossil of Natchez on the Mississippi, discussed 
 The Natchez Deposit, containing Bones of Mastodon and Megalonyx, pro 
 bably not older than the Flint Implements of St. Acheul . . PAGE 194 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 ANTIQUITY OF MAN RELATIVELY TO THE GLACIAL PERIOD AND TO THE 
 EXISTING FAUNA AND FLORA. 
 
 Chronological Relation of the Glacial Period, and the earliest known Signs of 
 Man's Appearance in Europe Series of Tertiary Deposits in Norfolk and 
 Suffolk immediately antecedent to the Glacial Period Gradual Refrigeration 
 of Climate proved by the Marine Shells of successive Groups Marine 
 Newer Pliocene Shells of northern Character, near Woodbridge Section of 
 tbe Norfolk Cliffs Norwich Crag Forest Bed and fluvio-marine Strata 
 Fossil Plants and Mammalia of the same Overlying Boulder Clay and 
 contorted Drift Newer freshwater Formation of Mundesley compared to 
 that of Hoxne Great Oscillations of Level implied by the Series of Strata 
 in the Norfolk Cliffs Earliest known Date of Man long subsequent to the 
 existing Fauna and Flora 206 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 CHRONOLOGICAL RELATIONS OF THE GLACIAL PERIOD AND THE EARLIEST 
 SIGNS OF MAN'S APPEARANCE IN EUROPE. 
 
 Chronological Relations of the Close of the Glacial Period and the earliest 
 geological Signs of the Appearance of Man Effects of Glaciers and Icebergs 
 in polishing and scoring Rocks Scandinavia once encrusted with Ice like 
 Greenland Outward Movement of Continental Ice in Greenland Mild 
 Climate of Greenland in the Miocene Period Erratics of recent Period in 
 Sweden Glacial State of Sweden in the Post-Pliocene Period Scotland 
 formerly encrusted with Ice Its subsequent Submergence and Re-elevation 
 Latest Changes produced by Glaciers in Scotland Remains of the Mammoth 
 and Reindeer in Scotch Boulder Clay Parallel Roads of Glen Roy formed 
 in Glacier Lakes Comparatively modern Date of these Shelves . 229 
 
CONTENTS. IX 
 
 CHAPTEE XIV. 
 CHRONOLOGICAL RELATIONS OF THE GLACIAL PERIOD AND THE EARLIEST 
 
 SIGNS OF MAN'S APPEARANCE IN EUROPE continued. 
 
 Signs of extinct Glaciers in Wales Great Submergence of Wales during the 
 Glacial Period proved by Marine Shells Still greater Depression inferred 
 from stratified Drift Scarcity of organic Eemains in Glacial Formations 
 Signs of extinct . Glaciers in England Ice Action in Ireland Maps 
 illustrating successive Eevolutions in Physical Geography during the Post- 
 Pliocene Period Southernmost Extent of Erratics in England Successive 
 Periods of Junction and Separation of England, Ireland, and the Continent 
 Time required for these Changes Probable Causes of the Upheaval and 
 Subsidence of the Earth's Crust Antiquity of Man considered in relation 
 to the Age of the existing Fauna and Flora .... PAGE 265 
 
 CHAPTEE XV. 
 
 EXTINCT GLACIERS OF THE ALPS AND THEIR CHRONOLOGICAL RELATION 
 TO THE HUMAN PERIOD. 
 
 Extinct Glaciers of Switzerland Alpine Erratic Blocks on the Jura Not 
 transported by floating Ice Extinct Glaciers of the Italian Side of 
 the Alps Theory of the Origin of Lake-Basins by the erosive Action of 
 Glaciers, considered Successive Phases in the Development of Glacial 
 Action in the Alps Probable Eelation of these to the earliest known Date 
 of Man Correspondence of the same with successive Changes in the Glacial 
 Condition of the Scandinavian and British Mountains Cold Period in 
 Sicily and Syria . .-_ . : . . , ,- . 4 V. ... 290 
 
 CHAPTEE XVI. 
 
 HUMAN REMAINS IN THE LOESS, AND THEIR PROBABLE AGE. 
 
 Nature, Origin, and Age of the Loess of the Ehine and Danube Impalpable 
 Mud produced by the grinding Action of Glaciers Dispersion of this Mud 
 at the Period of the Eetreat of the great Alpine Glaciers Continuity of 
 the Loess from Switzerland to the Low Countries Characteristic organic 
 Eemains not Lacustrine Alpine Gravel in the Valley of the Ehine covered 
 by Loess Geographical Distribution of the Loess and its Height above the 
 Sea Fossil Mammalia Loess of the Danube Oscillations in the Level 
 of the Alps and lower Country required to explain the Formation and 
 Denudation of the Loess More rapid Movement of the inland Country 
 The same Depression and Upheaval might account for the Advance and 
 Eetreat of the Alpine Glaciers Himalayan Mud of the Plains of the 
 Ganges compared to European Loess Human Eemains in Loess near 
 Maestricht, and their probable Antiquity 324 
 
X CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 POST-GLACIAL DISLOCATIONS AND FOLDINGS OF CRETACEOUS AND DRIFT 
 STRATA IN THE ISLAND OF MOEN, IN DENMARK. 
 
 Geological Structure of the Island of Moen Great Disturbances of the 
 Chalk posterior in Date to the Glacial Drift, with recent Shells M. Pug- 
 gaard's Sections of the Cliffs of Moen Flexures and Faults common to the 
 Chalk and Glacial Drift Different Direction of the Lines of successive 
 Movement, Fracture, and Flexure Undisturbed Condition of the Eocks in 
 the adjoining Danish Islands Unequal Movements of Upheaval in Finmark 
 
 Earthquake of New Zealand in 1855 Predominance in all Ages of 
 uniform Continental Movements over those by which the Eocks are 
 locally convulsed . . . <" * .;' . - ' PAGE 341 
 
 CHAPTEE XVIII. 
 
 THE GLACIAL PERIOD IN NORTH AMERICA. 
 
 Post-glacial Strata containing Eemains of Mastodon Giganteus in North 
 America Scarcity of Marine Shells in Glacial Drift of Canada and the 
 United States Greater southern Extension of Ice- action in North America 
 than in Europe Trains of Erratic Blocks of vast Size in Berkshire, Massa 
 chusetts Description of their Linear Arrangement and Points of Departure 
 
 Their Transportation referred to Floating and Coast Ice General 
 Remarks on the Causes of former Changes of Climate at successive geological 
 Epochs Supposed Effects of the Diversion of the Gulf Stream in a 
 Northerly instead of North-Easterly Direction Development of extreme 
 Cold on the opposite Sides of the Atlantic in the Glacial Period not strictly 
 simultaneous Number of Species of Plants and Animals common to Pre- 
 glacial and Post-glacial Times 351 
 
 CHAPTEE XIX. 
 
 RECAPITULATION OF GEOLOGICAL PROOFS OF MAN'S ANTIQUITY. 
 
 Recapitulation of Eesults arrived at in the earlier Chapters Ages of Stone 
 and Bronze Danish Peat and Kitchen-Middens Swiss Lake-Dwellings 
 Local Changes in Vegetation and in the wild and domesticated Animals and 
 in Physical Geography coeval with the Age of Bronze and the later Stone 
 Period Estimates of the positive Date of some Deposits of the later Stone 
 Period Ancient Division of the Age of Stone of St. Acheul and Aurignac 
 
 Migrations of Man in that Period from the Continent to England in Post- 
 Glacial Times Slow Rate of Progress in barbarous Ages Doctrine of the 
 superior Intelligence and Endowments of the original Stock of Mankind 
 considered Opinions of the Greeks and Eomans, and their Coincidence 
 with those of the modern Progressionist Early Egyptian Civilisation and 
 its Date in comparison with that .of the First and Second Stone Periods 
 
CONTENTS. XI 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 THEORIES OF PROGRESSION AND TRANSMUTATION. 
 
 Antiquity and Persistency in Character of the existing Races of Mankind 
 Theory of their Unity of Origin considered Bearing of the Diversity of 
 Races on the Doctrine of Transmutation Difficulty of defining the Terms 
 'Species' and 'Race' Lamarck's Introduction of the Element of Time into 
 the Definition of a Species His Theory of Variation and Progression 
 Objections to his Theory, how far answered Arguments of modern Writers 
 in favour of Progression in the Animal and Vegetable World The old 
 Landmarks supposed to indicate the first Appearance of Man, and of dif 
 ferent Classes of Animals, found to be erroneous Yet the Theory of an 
 advancing Series of organic Beings not inconsistent with Facts Earliest 
 known Fossil Mammalia of low Grade No Vertebrata as yet discovered in 
 the oldest fossiliferous Rocks Objections to the Theory of Progression 
 considered Causes of the Popularity of the Doctrine of Progression as 
 compared to that of Transmutation PAGE 385 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES BY VARIATION AND NATURAL SELECTION. 
 
 Mr. Darwin's Theory of the Origin of Species by Natural Selection Memoir 
 by Mr. Wallace Manner in which favoured Races prevail in the Struggle 
 for Existence Formation of new Races by breeding Hypothesis of 
 definite and indefinite Modifiability equally arbitrary Competition and 
 Extinction of Races Progression not a necessary Accompaniment of 
 Variation Distinct Classes of Phenomena which natural Selection explains 
 Unity of Type, rudimentary Organs, Geographical Distribution, Relation 
 of the extinct to the living Fauna and Flora, and mutual Relations of suc 
 cessive Groups of Fossil Forms Light thrown on Embryological Develop 
 ment by natural Selection Why large Genera have more variable Species 
 than small ones Dr. Hooker on the Evidence afforded by the Vegetable 
 Kingdom in favour of Creation by Variation Sefstrom on alternate Gene 
 ration How far the Doctrine of independent Creation is opposed to the 
 Laws now governing the Migration of Species 407 
 
 CHAPTER. XXII. 
 
 OBJECTIONS TO THE HYPOTHESIS OF TRANSMUTATION CONSIDERED. 
 
 Statement of Objections to the Hypothesis of Transmutation founded on the 
 Absence of intermediate Forms Genera of which the Species are closely 
 allied Occasional Discovery of the missing Links in a Fossil State 
 Davidson's Monograph on the Brachiopoda Why the Gradational Forms, 
 when found, are not accepted as Evidence of Transmutation Gaps caused 
 by Extinction of Races and Species Vast Tertiary Periods during which 
 this Extinction has been going on in the Fauna and Flora now existing 
 
Xli CONTENTS. 
 
 Genealogical Bond between Miocene and recent Plants and Insects Fossils 
 of Oeninghen Species of Insects in Britain and North America represented 
 by distinct Varieties Falconer's Monograph on living and fossil Elephants 
 Fossil Species and Genera of the Horse Tribe in North and South America 
 
 Eelation of the Pliocene Mammalia of North America, Asia, and Europe 
 
 Species of Mammalia, though less persistent than the Mollusca, change 
 slowly Arguments for and against Transmutation derived from the Absence 
 of Mammalia in Islands Imperfection of the Geological Eecord Inter 
 calation of newly discovered Formations of intermediate Age in the chronolo 
 gical Series Eeference of the St. Cassian Beds to the Triassic Period 
 Discovery of new organic Types Feathered Archseopteryx of the Oolite 
 
 PAGE 424 
 
 CHAPTEE XXIII. 
 ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGES AND SPECIES COMPARED. 
 
 Aryan Hypothesis and Controversy The Eaces of Mankind change more 
 slowly than their Languages Theory of the gradual Origin of Languages 
 
 Difficulty of defining what is meant by a Language as distinct from a 
 Dialect Great Number of extinct and living Tongues No European 
 Language a Thousand Years old Gaps between Languages, how caused 
 
 Imperfection of the Eecord Changes always in Progress Struggle for 
 Existence between Eival Terms and Dialects Causes of Selection Each 
 Language formed slowly in a single geographical Area May die out 
 gradually or suddenly Once lost can never be revived Mode of Origin 
 of Languages and Species a Mystery Speculations as to the Number of 
 original Languages or Species unprofitable 454 
 
 CHAPTEE XXIV. 
 
 BEARING OF THE DOCTRINE OF TRANSMUTATION ON THE ORIGIN OF 
 MAN, AND HIS PLACE IN THE CREATION. 
 
 Whether Man can be regarded as an Exception to the Eule if the Doctrine of 
 Transmutation be embraced for the rest of the Animal Kingdom Zoological 
 Eelations of Man to other Mammalia Systems of Classification Term 
 Quadrumanous, why deceptive Whether the Structure of the Human Brain 
 entitles Man to form a distinct Sub-class of the Mammalia Eecent Con 
 troversy as to the Degree of Eesemblance between the Brain of Man and 
 that of the Apes Intelligence of the lower Animals compared to the 
 Intellect and Eeason of Man Grounds on which Man has been referred 
 to a distinct Kingdom of Nature Immaterial Principle common to Man 
 and Animals Non-discovery of intermediate Links among Fossil Anthropo 
 morphous Species Hallam on the compound Nature of Man, and his Place 
 in the Creation Dr. Asa Gray on Gradations in Nature, and on the bearing 
 of the Doctrine of Natural Selection on Natural Theology . , . 471 
 
GEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE 
 
 OF 
 
 THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN, 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 INTRODUCTOKY. 
 
 PRELIMINARY REMARKS ON THE SUBJECTS TREATED OF IN THIS WORK 
 
 DEFINITION OF THE TERMS RECENT, POST-PLIOCENE, AND POST-TER 
 TIARY TABULAR VIEW OF THE ENTIRE SERIES OF FOSS1LLFEROUS 
 STRATA. 
 
 NO subject has lately excited more curiosity and general 
 interest among geologists and the public than the 
 question of the Antiquity of the Human Eace, whether or 
 no we have sufficient evidence in caves, or in the superficial 
 deposits commonly called drift or ' diluvium,' to prove the 
 former co-existence of man with certain extinct mammalia. 
 For the last half-century, the occasional occurrence, in va 
 rious parts of Europe, of the bones of man or the works of 
 his hands, in cave-breccias and stalactites, associated with the 
 remains of the extinct hyaena, bear, elephant, or rhinoceros, 
 has given rise to a suspicion that the date of man must be 
 carried further back than we had heretofore imagined. On 
 the other hand, extreme reluctance was naturally felt, on the 
 part of scientific reasoners, to admit the validity of such 
 
2 PRELIMINARY -REMARKS. CHAP. I. 
 
 evidence, seeing that so many caves have been inhabited 
 by a succession of tenants, and have been selected by man, 
 as a place not only of domicile, but of sepulture, while some 
 caves have also served as the channels through which the 
 waters of occasional land-floods or engulfed rivers have 
 flowed, so that the remains of living beings which have 
 peopled the district at more than one era may have subse 
 quently been mingled in such caverns and confounded 
 together in one and the same deposit. But the facts brought 
 to light in 1858, during the systematic investigation of the 
 Brixham cave, near Torquay in Devonshire, which will be 
 described in the sequel, excited anew the curiosity of the 
 British public, and prepared the way for a general admission 
 that scepticism in regard to the bearing of cave evidence in 
 favour of the antiquity of man had previously been pushed 
 to an extreme. 
 
 Since that period, many of the facts formerly adduced in 
 favour of the co-existence in ancient times of man with 
 certain species of mammalia long since extinct have been 
 re-examined in England and on the Continent, and new cases 
 bearing on the same question, whether relating to caves or 
 to alluvial strata in valleys, have been brought to light. To 
 qualify myself for the appreciation and discussion of these 
 cases, I have visited, in the course of the last three years, 
 many parts of England, France, and Belgium, and have 
 communicated personally or by letter with not a few of the 
 geologists, English and foreign, who have taken part in these 
 researches. Besides explaining in the present volume the 
 results of this enquiry, I shall give a description of the 
 glacial formations of Europe and North America, that I may 
 allude to the theories entertained respecting their origin, and 
 consider their probable relations in a chronological point of 
 view to the human epoch, and why throughout' a great part 
 of the northern hemisphere they so often interpose an abrupt 
 
CHAP. I, SUBJECTS TREATED OF IN THIS WORK. 3 
 
 barrier to all attempts to trace farther back into the past the 
 signs of the existence of man upon the earth. 
 
 In the concluding chapters I shall offer a few remarks on 
 the, recent modifications of the Lamarckian theory of pro 
 gressive development and transmutation, which are sug 
 gested by Mr. Darwin's work on the ' Origin of Species, by 
 Variation and Natural Selection,' and the bearing of this 
 hypothesis on the different races of mankind and their con 
 nection with other parts of the animal kingdom. 
 
 Nomenclature. Some preliminary explanation of the 
 nomenclature adopted in the following pages will be indis 
 pensable, that the meaning attached to the terms Recent, 
 Post-pliocene, and Post-tertiary may be correctly understood. 
 
 Previously to the year 1833, when I published the third 
 volume of the f Principles of Geology,' the strata called 
 Tertiary had been divided by geologists into Lower, Middle, 
 and Upper ; the Lower comprising the oldest formations of the 
 environs of Paris and London, with others of like age ; the 
 Middle, those of Bordeaux and Touraine ; and the Upper, all 
 that lay above or were newer than the last-mentioned, group. 
 
 When engaged, in 1828, in preparing for the press the 
 treatise on geology above alluded to, I conceived the idea of 
 classing the whole of this series of strata according to the 
 different degrees of affinity which their fossil testacea bore to 
 the living fauna. Having obtained information on this 
 subject during my travels on the Continent, I learnt that 
 M.Deshayes of Paris, already celebrated as a conchologist, had 
 been led independently, by the study of a large collection of 
 recent and fossil shells, to very similar views respecting the 
 possibility of arranging the tertiary formations in chrono 
 logical order, according to the proportional number of species 
 of shells identical with living ones, which characterised each 
 of the successive groups above mentioned. After comparing 
 3000 fossil species with 5000 living ones, the result arrived at 
 
 B 2 
 
4 DEFINITION OF THE TERMS CHAP. I. 
 
 was, that in the lower tertiary strata, there were about 3|- 
 per cent, identical with recent ; in the middle tertiary (the 
 faluns of the Loire and Gironde), about 17 per cent. ; and in 
 the upper tertiary, from 35 to 50, and sometimes in the most 
 modern beds as much as 90 to 95 per cent. For the sake of 
 clearness and brevity, I proposed to give short technical names 
 to these sets of strata, or the periods to which they respec 
 tively belonged. I called the first or oldest of them Eocene, 
 the second Miocene, and the third Pliocene. The first of 
 the above terms, Eocene, is derived from r)cu$ eos 9 dawn, and 
 xottvos kainos, recent; because an extremely small propor 
 tion of the fossil shells of this period could be referred to 
 living species, so that this era seemed to indicate the dawn of 
 the present testaceous fauna, no living species of shells having 
 been detected in the antecedent or secondary rocks. 
 
 Some conchologists are now unwilling to allow that any 
 Eocene species of shell has really survived to our times so 
 unaltered as to allow of its specific identification with a living 
 species. I cannot enter in this place into this wide controversy. 
 It is enough at present to remark, that the character of the 
 Eocene fauna, as contrasted with that of the antecedent 
 secondary formations, wears a very modern aspect, and that 
 some able living conchologists still maintain that there are 
 Eocene shells not specifically distinguishable from those now 
 extant; though they may be fewer in number than was 
 supposed in 1833. 
 
 The term Miocene (from peicov melon, less; and xaivo'f 
 kainos 9 recent) is intended to express a minor proportion of 
 recent species (of testacea) ; the term Pliocene (from 7r\slwv 
 pleion, more ; and xaTvoj kainos, recent), a comparative 
 plurality of the same. 
 
 It has sometimes been objected to this nomenclature that 
 certain species of infusoria found in the chalk are still 
 existing, and, on the other hand, the Miocene and Older 
 
CHAP. I. RECENT, POST-PLIOCENE, AND POST-TERTIARY. 5 
 
 Pliocene deposits often contain the remains of mammalia, 
 reptiles, and fish, exclusively of extinct species. But the 
 reader must bear in mind that the terms Eocene, Miocene, 
 and Pliocene were originally invented with reference purely 
 to conchological data, and in that sense have always been and 
 are still used by me. 
 
 Since the first introduction of the terms above defined, the 
 number of new living species of shells obtained from different 
 parts of the globe has been exceedingly great, supplying fresh 
 data for comparison, and enabling the paleontologist to 
 correct many erroneous identifications of fossil and recent 
 forms. New species also have been collected in abundance 
 from tertiary formations of every age, while newly discovered 
 groups of strata have filled up gaps in the previously known 
 series. Hence modifications and reforms have been called 
 for in the classification first proposed. The Eocene, Miocene, 
 and Pliocene periods have been made to comprehend certain 
 sets of strata of which the fossils do not always conform 
 strictly in the proportion of recent to extinct species with the 
 definitions first given by me, or which are implied in the 
 etymology of those terms. These innovations have been 
 treated of in my ( Elements or Manual of Elementary 
 Greology,' and in the Supplement to the fifth edition of the 
 same, published in 1859, where some modifications of my 
 classification, as first proposed, are introduced ; but I need 
 not dwell on these on the present occasion, as the only 
 formations with which we shall be concerned in the pre 
 sent volume are those of the most modern date, or the 
 Post-tertiary. It will be convenient to divide these into two 
 groups, the Eecent and the Post-pliocene. In the Eecent we 
 may comprehend those deposits in which not only all the 
 shells but all the fossil mammalia are of living species ; in the 
 Post-pliocene those strata in which, the shells being recent, 
 a portion, and often a considerable one, of the accompanying 
 
6 DEFINITION OF TERMS. CHAP. I. 
 
 fossil quadrupeds belongs to extinct species. I am aware that 
 it may be objected, with some justice, to this nomenclature, 
 that the term Post-pliocene ought in strictness to include all 
 geological monuments posterior in date to the Pliocene; 
 but when I have occasion to speak of these in the aggregate, 
 I shall call them Post-tertiary, and reserve the term Post- 
 pliocene exclusively for Lower Post-pliocene, the Upper Post- 
 pliocene formations being called 6 Eecent.' 
 
 Cases will occur where it may be scarcely possible to draw 
 the line of demarcation between the Newer Pliocene and Post- 
 pliocene, or between the latter and the recent deposits ; and 
 we must expect these difficulties to increase rather than 
 diminish with every advance in our knowledge, and in propor 
 tion as gaps are filled up in the series of geological records. 
 
 In 1839 I proposed the term Pleistocene as an abbreviation 
 for Newer Pliocene, and it soon became popular, because 
 adopted by the late Edward Forbes in his admirable essay 
 on 'The Geological Kelations of the existing Fauna and 
 Flora of the British Isles;'* but he applied the term almost 
 precisely in the sense in which I shall use Post-pliocene in this 
 volume, and not as short for Newer Pliocene. In order to 
 prevent confusion, I think it best entirely to abstain from 
 the use of Pleistocene in future ; I have found that the 
 introduction of such a fourth name (unless restricted solely to 
 the older Post-tertiary formations) must render the use of 
 Pliocene, in its original extended sense, impossible, and it is 
 often almost indispensable to have a single term to compre 
 hend both divisions of the Pliocene period. 
 
 The annexed tabular view of the whole series of fossiliferous 
 strata will enable the reader to see at a glance the chrono 
 logical relation of the Eecent and Post-pliocene to the ante 
 cedent periods. 
 
 * Geological Kelations of the Survey of Great Britain, vol. i. p. 336. 
 existing Fauna and Flora of the London, 1846.) 
 British Isles. (Memoirs of Geological 
 
CHAP. I. 
 
 TABULAR VIEW OF FOSSILIFEROUS STRATA. 
 
 ABRIDGED GENERAL TABLE OF FOSSILIFEROUS STEATA. 
 
 1. RECENT. 
 
 2. POST-PLIOCENE. 
 
 3. NEWER PLIOCENE. 
 
 4. OLDER PLIOCENE. 
 
 5. UPPER MIOCENE. 
 
 6. LOWER MIOCENE. 
 
 7. UPPER EOCENE. 
 
 8. MIDDLE EOCENE. 
 
 9. LOWER EOCENE. 
 
 10. MAESTRICHT BEDS. 
 
 11. UPPER WHITE CHALK. 
 
 12. LOWER WHITE CHALK. 
 
 13. UPPER GREENSAND. 
 J4. GAULT. 
 
 15. LOWER GREENSAND. 
 
 16. WEALDEN. 
 
 17. PURBECK BEDS. 
 
 18. PORTLAND STONE. 
 
 19. KIMMERIDGE CLAY. 
 
 20. CORAL RAG. 
 
 21. OXFORD CLAY. 
 
 22. GREAT or BATH OOLITE. 
 
 23. INFERIOR OOLITE. 
 
 24. LIAS 
 
 25. UPPER TRIAS. 
 
 26. MIDDLE TRIAS, or 
 
 MUSCHELKALK. 
 
 POST-TERTIARY. 
 
 PLIOCENE. 
 
 MIOCENE. 
 
 EOCENE. 
 
 CRETACEOUS. 
 
 JURASSIC. 
 
 TRIASSIC. 
 
 y 
 
 fc oO 
 
 O CQ 
 
 CO 
 
 27. LOWER TRIAS. 
 
 ) 
 
 28. PERMIAN, 
 
 
 or 
 MAGNESIAN LIMESTONE 
 
 PERMIAN. 
 
 
 
 29. COAL-MEASURES. 
 
 
 u 
 
 30. CARBONIFEROUS 
 LIMESTONE. 
 
 CARBONIFEROUS. 
 
 d O 
 
 * 1 
 
 
 
 <H N N 
 
 31. UPPER ^ 
 I DEVONIAN. 
 
 32. LOWER] 
 
 DEVONIAN. 
 
 a I s 
 
 33. UPPER ) 
 
 
 * 2 <i 
 
 \ SILURIAN. 
 34. LOWER) 
 
 SILURIAN. 
 
 P-I 
 
 35. UPPER 1 
 
 
 
 ^CAMBRIAN, 
 ic T m\TT?a 
 
 CAMBRIAN* 
 
 . 
 
WORKS OF ART IN DANISH PEAT-MOSSES. CHAP. u. 
 
 CHAPTEK II. 
 
 RECENT PERIOD DANISH PEAT AND SHELL MOUNDS SWISS 
 LAKE DWELLINGS. 
 
 WORKS OF ART IN DANISH PEAT-MOSSES REMAINS OF THREE PERIODS 
 
 OF VEGETATION IN THE PEAT AGES OF STONE, BRONZE, AND IRON 
 
 SHELL-MOUNDS OR ANCIENT REFUSE-HEAPS OF THE DANISH ISLANDS 
 
 CHANGE IN GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF MARINE MOLLUSCA SINCE 
 THEIR ORIGIN EMBEDDED REMAINS OF MAMMALIA OF RECENT SPECIES 
 
 HUMAN SKULLS OF THE SAME PERIOD SWISS LAKE-DWELLINGS 
 
 BUILT ON PILES STONE AND BRONZE IMPLEMENTS FOUND IN THEM 
 
 FOSSIL CEREALS AND OTHER PLANTS REMAINS OF MAMMALIA, WILD 
 
 AND DOMESTICATED NO EXTINCT SPECIES CHRONOLOGICAL COM 
 PUTATIONS OF THE DATE OF THE BRONZE AND STONE PERIODS IN 
 SWITZERLAND LAKE-DWELLINGS, OR ARTIFICIAL ISLANDS CALLED 
 'CRANNOGES,' IN IRELAND. 
 
 Works of Art in Danish Peat. 
 
 WHEN treating in the ( Principles of Geology ' of the 
 changes of the earth which have taken place in compa 
 ratively modern times, I have spoken (chap, xlv.) of the em 
 bedding of organic bodies and human remains in peat, and 
 explained under what conditions the growth of that vegetable 
 substance is going on in northern and humid climates. Of 
 late years, since I first alluded to the subject, more extensive 
 investigations have been made into the history of the Danish 
 peat-mosses. Of the results of these enquiries I shall give a 
 brief abstract in the present chapter, that we may afterwards 
 compare them with deposits of older date, which throw 
 light on the antiquity of the human race. 
 
 The deposits of peat in Denmark,* varying in depth from 
 
 * An excellent account of these re- and will be found in the Bulletin de 
 
 searches of Danish naturalists and la Societ6 Vaudoise des Sci. Nat., t. vi. 
 
 antiquaries has been drawn up by an Lausanne, 1860. 
 able Swiss geologist, M. A. Morlot, 
 
CHAP. ii. WORKS OP ART IN DANISH PEAT-MOSSES. 9 
 
 ten to thirty feet, have been formed in hollows or depres 
 sions in the northern drift or boulder formation hereafter to 
 be described. The lowest stratum, two to three feet thick, 
 consists of swamp-peat composed chiefly of moss or sphagnum, 
 above which lies another growth of peat, not made up 
 exclusively of aquatic or swamp plants. Around the borders 
 of the bogs, and at various depths in them, lie trunks of trees, 
 especially of the Scotch fir (Pinus sylvestris), often three 
 feet in diameter, which must have grown on the margin of 
 the peat-mosses, and have frequently fallen into them. 
 This tree is not now, nor has ever been in historical times, a 
 native of the Danish Islands, and when introduced there has 
 not thriven ; yet it was evidently indigenous in the human 
 period, for Steenstrup has taken out witji his own hands a 
 flint instrument from below a buried trunk of one of these 
 pines. It appears clear that the same Scotch fir was after 
 wards supplanted by the sessile variety of the common oak, 
 of which many prostrate trunks occur in the peat at higher 
 levels than the pines ; and still higher the pedunculated 
 variety of the same oak (Quercus Robur L.) occurs with the 
 alder, birch (Betula verrucosa Ehrh.), and hazel. The oak 
 has now in its turn been almost superseded in Denmark by the 
 common beech. Other trees, such as the white birch (Betula 
 alba), characterise the lower part of the bogs, and disappear 
 from the higher ; while others again, like the aspen (Populus 
 tremula), occur at all levels, and still flourish in Denmark. 
 All the land and fresh-water shells, and all the mammalia as 
 well as the plants, whose remains occur buried in the 
 Danish peat, are of recent species. 
 
 It has been stated, that a stone implement was found 
 under a buried Scotch fir at a great depth in the peat. By 
 collecting and studying a vast variety of such implements, 
 and other articles of human workmanship preserved in peat 
 and in sand-dunes on the coast, as also in certain shell- 
 mounds of the aborigines presently to be described, the 
 
10 AGES OF STONE, BRONZE, AND IRON. CHAP. II. 
 
 Danish and Swedish antiquaries and naturalists, MM. Nillson, 
 Steenstrup, Forchhammer, Thomsen, Worsaae and others, 
 have succeeded in establishing a chronological succession of 
 periods, which they have called the ages of stone, of bronze, 
 and of iron, named from the materials which have each in 
 their turn served for the fabrication of implements. 
 
 The age of stone in Denmark coincided with the period 
 of the first vegetation, or that of the Scotch fir, and in part 
 at least with the second vegetation, or that of the oak. But 
 a considerable portion of the oak epoch coincided with ' the 
 age of bronze,' for swords and shields of that metal, now 
 in the Museum of Copenhagen, have been taken out of peat 
 in which oaks abound. The age of iron corresponded more 
 nearly with that of the beech tree.* 
 
 M. Morlot, to whom we are indebted for a masterly sketch 
 of the recent progress of this new line of research, followed 
 up with so much success in Scandinavia and Switzerland, 
 observes that the introduction of the first tools made of bronze 
 among a people previously ignorant of the use of metals, im 
 plies a great advance in the arts, for bronze is an alloy of 
 about nine parts of copper and one of tin ; and although the 
 former metal, copper, is by no means rare, and is occasionally 
 found pure or in a native state, tin is not only scarce but 
 never occurs native. To detect the existence of this metal in 
 its ore, then to disengage it from the matrix, and finally, 
 after blending it in due proportion with copper, to cast the 
 fused mixture in a mould, allowing time for it to acquire 
 hardness by slow cooling, all this bespeaks no small sagacity 
 and skilful manipulation. Accordingly, the pottery found 
 associated with weapons of bronze is of a more ornamental 
 and tasteful style than any which belongs to the age of 
 stone. Some of the moulds in which the bronze instruments 
 were cast, and ( tags,' as they are called, of bronze, which are 
 
 * Morlot, Bulletin de la Societe Vaudoise des Sci. Nat., t. vi. p. 292. 
 
CHAP. II. DANISH SHELL-MOUNDS. 11 
 
 formed in the hole through which the fused metal was poured, 
 have been found. The number and variety of objects belong 
 ing to the age of bronze indicates its long duration, as does 
 the progress in the arts implied by the rudeness of the earlier 
 tools, often mere repetitions of those of the stone age, as 
 contrasted with the more skilfully worked weapons of a later 
 stage of the same period. 
 
 It has been suggested that an age of copper must always 
 have intervened between that of stone and bronze ; but if so, 
 the interval seems to have been short in Europe, owing 
 apparently to the territory occupied by the aboriginal in 
 habitants having been invaded and conquered by a people 
 coming from the East, to whom the use of swords, spears, and 
 other weapons of bronze was familiar. Hatchets, however, of 
 copper have been found in the Danish peat. 
 
 The next stage of improvement, or that manifested by the 
 substitution of iron for bronze, indicates another stride in the 
 progress of the arts. Iron never presents itself, except in 
 meteorites, in a native state, so that to recognise its ores, and 
 then to separate the metal from its matrix, demands no small 
 exercise of the powers of observation and invention. To fuse 
 the ore requires an intense heat, not to be obtained without 
 artificial appliances, such as pipes inflated by the human 
 breath, or bellows, or some other suitable machinery. 
 
 Danish Shell-mounds, or Kjokkenmodding.* 
 
 In addition to the peat-mosses, another class of memorials 
 found in Denmark has thrown light on the pre-historical age. 
 At certain points along the shores of nearly all the Danish 
 
 * Mr. John Lubbock published, p. 489, in which he has described the 
 
 after these sheets were written, an results of a recent visit to Denmark, 
 
 able paper on the Danish ' shell- made by him in company with Messrs, 
 
 mounds ' in the October Number of Busk, Prestwich, and Galton. 
 the Natural History Keview, 1861, 
 
12 DANISH SHELL -MOUNDS, . CHAP. n. 
 
 islands, mounds may be seen, consisting chiefly of thousands 
 of cast-away shells of the oyster, cockle, and other mollusks 
 of the same species as those which are now eaten by man. 
 These shells are plentifully mixed up with the bones of 
 various quadrupeds, birds and fish, which served as the food 
 of the rude hunters and fishers by whom the mounds were 
 accumulated. I have seen similar large heaps of oysters, 
 and other marine shells, with interspersed stone implements, 
 near the sea-shore, both in Massachusetts and in Georgia, 
 U. S,, left by the native North American Indians at points 
 near to which they were in the habit of pitching their wig 
 wams for centuries before the white man arrived. 
 
 Such accumulations are called by the Danes, Kjokken- 
 modding, or 'kitchen-refuse-heaps.' Scattered all through 
 them are flint knives, hatchets, and other instruments of 
 stone, horn, wood, and bone, with fragments of coarse pottery, 
 mixed with charcoal and cinders, but never any implements 
 of bronze, still less of iron. The stone hatchets and knives 
 had been sharpened by rubbing, and in this respect are one 
 degree less rude than those of an older date, associated in 
 France with the bones of extinct mammalia, of which more 
 in the sequel. The mounds vary in height from 3 to 10 feet, 
 and in area are some of them 1000 feet long, and from 150 
 to 200 wide. They are rarely placed more than 10 feet 
 above the level of the sea, and are confined to its immediate 
 neighbourhood, or if not (and there are cases where they are 
 several miles from the shore), the distance is ascribable to the 
 entrance of a small stream, which has deposited sediment, or 
 to the growth of a peaty swamp, by which the land has been 
 made to advance on the Baltic, as it is still doing in many 
 places, aided, according to M. Puggaard, by a very slow up 
 heaval of the whole country at the rate of two or three inches 
 in a century. 
 
 There is also another geographical fact equally in favour 
 
CHAP. II. OR 'KITCHEN-MIDDENS.' 13 
 
 of the antiquity of the mounds, viz., that they are wanting 
 on those parts of the coast which border the Western Ocean, 
 or exactly where the waves are now slowly eating away the 
 land. There is every reason to presume that originally there 
 were stations along the coast of the Grerman Ocean as well 
 as that of the Baltic, but by the gradual undermining of 
 the cliffs they have all been swept away. 
 
 Another striking proof, perhaps the most conclusive of 
 all, that the ' refuse-heaps ' are very old, is derived from 
 the character of their embedded shells. These consist en 
 tirely of living species ; but, in the first place, the common 
 eatable oyster is among them, attaining its full size, whereas 
 the same Ostrea edulis cannot live at present in the brackish 
 waters of the Baltic except near its entrance, where, when 
 ever a north-westerly gale prevails, a current setting in from 
 the ocean pours in a great body of salt water. Yet it seems 
 that during the whole time of the accumulation of the 
 'shell-mounds' the oyster flourished in places from which 
 it is now excluded. In like manner the eatable cockle, 
 mussel, and periwinkle (Cardium edule, Mytilus edulis, 
 and Littorina littored), which are met with in great 
 numbers in the ( refuse-heaps,' are of the ordinary dimen 
 sions which they acquire in the ocean, whereas the same 
 species now living in the adjoining parts of the Baltic 
 only attain a third of their natural size, being stunted and 
 dwarfed in their growth by the quantity of fresh water 
 poured by rivers into that inland sea.* Hence we may con 
 fidently infer that in the days of the aboriginal hunters and 
 fishers, the ocean had freer access than now to the Baltic, 
 communicating probably through the peninsula of Jutland, 
 Jutland having been at no remote period an archipelago. 
 Even in the course of the present century, the salt waters 
 
 * See Principles of Geology, ch. xxx. 
 
14 DANISH SHELL-MOUNDS, CHAP. II. 
 
 have made one eruption into the Baltic by the Lymfiord, 
 although they have been now again excluded. It is also 
 affirmed that other channels were open in historical times 
 which are now silted up.* 
 
 If we next turn to the remains of vertebrata preserved in 
 the mounds, we find that here also, as in the Danish peat 
 mosses, all the quadrupeds belong to species known to have 
 inhabited Europe within the memory of man. No remains 
 of the mammoth, or rhinoceros, or of any extinct species 
 appear, except those of the wild bull (Bos Urus Linn., or Bos 
 primigenius Bojanus), which are in such numbers as to 
 prove that the species was a favourite food of the ancient 
 people. But as this animal was seen by Julius Caesar, and 
 survived long after his time, its presence alone would not 
 go far to prove the mounds to be of high antiquity. The 
 Lithuanian aurochs or bison (Bos Bison L., Bos priscus Boj., 
 which has escaped extirpation only because protected by the 
 Kussian Czars, surviving in one forest in Lithuania) has not 
 yet been met with, but will no doubt be detected hereafter, 
 as it has been already found in the Danish peat. The 
 beaver, long since destroyed in Denmark, occurs frequently, 
 as does the seal (Phoca Gryppus Fab.), now very rare on 
 the Danish coast. With these are mingled bones of the red 
 deer and roe, but the rein-deer has not yet been found. 
 There are also the bones of many carnivora, such as the 
 lynx, fox, and wolf, but no signs of any domesticated animals 
 except the dog. The long bones of the larger mammalia 
 have been all broken as if by some instrument, in such a 
 manner as to allow of the extraction of the marrow, and the 
 gristly parts have been gnawed off, as if by dogs, to whose 
 agency is also attributed the almost entire absence of the 
 bones of young birds and of the smaller bones and softer 
 
 * See Morlot, Bulletin de la Socie"te Vaudoise des Sci. Nat. t. vi. 
 
CHAP. II. OR ' KITCHEN-MIDDENS.' 15 
 
 parts of the skeletons of birds in general, even of those of 
 large size. In reference to the latter, it has been proved ex 
 perimentally by Professor Steenstrup, that if the same species 
 of birds are now given to dogs, they will devour those parts 
 of the skeleton which are missing, and leave just those which 
 are preserved in the old e refuse-heaps.' 
 
 The dogs of the mounds, the only domesticated animals, 
 are of a smaller race than those of the bronze period, as 
 shown by the peat-mosses, and the dogs of the bronze age 
 are inferior in size and strength to those of the iron age. 
 The domestic ox, horse, and sheep, which are wanting in the 
 mounds, are confined to that part of the Danish peat which 
 grew in the ages of bronze and iron. 
 
 Among the bones of birds, scarcely any are more frequent 
 in the mounds than those of the auk or penguin (Alca 
 impennis\ now extinct in Europe, having but lately died 
 out in Iceland, but said still to survive in Greenland, where, 
 however, its numbers are fast diminishing. The Capercailzie 
 (Tetrao Urogallus) is also met with, and may, it is suggested, 
 have fed on the buds of the Scotch fir in times when that 
 tree flourished around the peat-bogs. The different stages of 
 growth of the roe-deer's horns, and the presence of the wild 
 swan, now only a winter visitor, have been appealed to as 
 proving that the aborigines resided in the same settlements 
 all the year round. That they also ventured out to sea in 
 canoes such as are now found in the peat-mosses, hollowed 
 out of the trunk of a single tree, to catch fish far from land, 
 is testified by the bony relics of several deep-sea species, such 
 as the herring, cod, and flounder. The ancient people were 
 not cannibals, for no human bones are mingled with the spoils 
 of the chase. Skulls, however, have been obtained not only 
 from peat, but from tumuli of the stone period believed to be 
 contemporaneous with the mounds. These skulls are small 
 and round, and have a prominent ridge over the orbits of 
 
16 SUCCESSION OF TREES IN DANISH PEAT. CHAP. n. 
 
 the eyes, showing that the ancient race was of small stature, 
 with round heads and overhanging eyebrows, in short, they 
 bore a considerable resemblance to the modern Laplanders. 
 The human skulls of the bronze age found in the Danish peat, 
 and those of the iron period, are of an elongated form and 
 larger size. There appear to be very few well-authenti 
 cated examples of crania referable to the bronze period, a 
 circumstance no doubt attributable to the custom prevalent 
 among the people of that era of burning their dead and 
 collecting their bones in funeral urns. 
 
 No traces of grain of any sort have hitherto been discovered, 
 nor any other indication that the ancient people had any 
 knowledge of agriculture. The only vegetable remains in the 
 mounds are burnt pieces of wood and some charred substance 
 referred by Dr. For ch hammer to the Zoster a marina, a sea 
 plant which was perhaps used in the production of salt. 
 
 What may be the antiquity of the earliest human remains 
 preserved in the Danish peat cannot be estimated in centuries 
 with any approach to accuracy. In the first place, in going 
 back to the bronze age, we already find ourselves beyond the 
 reach of history or even of tradition. In the time of the 
 Eomans the Danish Isles were covered, as now, with magnifi 
 cent beech forests. Nowhere in the world does this tree flou 
 rish more luxuriantly than in Denmark, and eighteen centuries 
 seem to have done little or nothing towards modifying the cha 
 racter of the forest vegetation. Yet in the antecedent bronze 
 period there were no beech trees, or at most but a few stragglers, 
 the country being then covered with oak. In the age of stone 
 again, the Scotch fir prevailed (see p. 9), and already there 
 were human inhabitants in those old pine forests. How many 
 generations of each species of tree flourished in succession 
 before the pine was supplanted by the oak, and the oak by 
 the beech, can be but vaguely conjectured, but the minimum 
 of time required for the formation of so much peat must, ac- 
 
CHAP. II. ANCIENT SWISS LAKE-DWELLINGS. 17 
 
 cording to the estimate of Steenstrup and other good authori 
 ties, have amounted to at least 4000 years; and there is nothing 
 in the observed rate of the growth of peat opposed to the 
 conclusion that the number of centuries may not have been four 
 times as great, even though the signs of man's existence have 
 not yet been traced down to the lowest or amorphous stratum. 
 As to the ' shell-mounds,' they correspond in date to the 
 older portion of the peaty record, or to the earliest part of the 
 age of stone as known in Denmark. 
 
 Ancient Swiss Lake-dwellings, built on Piles. 
 
 In the shallow parts of many Swiss lakes, where there is 
 a depth of no more than from five to fifteen feet of water, 
 ancient wooden piles are observed at the bottom sometimes 
 worn down to the surface of the mud, sometimes projecting 
 slightly above it. These have evidently once supported 
 villages, nearly all of them of unknown date, but the most 
 ancient of which certainly belonged to the age of stone, for 
 hundreds of implements resembling those of the Danish 
 shell-mounds and peat-mosses have been dredged up from 
 the mud into which the piles were driven. 
 
 The earliest historical account of such habitations is that 
 given by Herodotus of a Thracian tribe, who dwelt, in the 
 year 520 B.C., in Prasias, a small mountain-lake of Pseonia, 
 now part of Modern Eoumelia.* 
 
 Their habitations were constructed on platforms raised 
 above the lake, and resting on piles. They were connected 
 with the shore by a narrow causeway of similar formation. 
 Such platforms must have been of considerable extent, for 
 the Pseonians lived there with their families and horses. 
 Their food consisted largely of the fish which the lake 
 produced in abundance. 
 
 * Herodotus, lib. v. cap. 16. Kediscovered by M. Deville, Nat. Hist. Eer., 
 Oct. 1862, vol. ii. p. 486. 
 
 C 
 
18 ANCIENT SWISS LAKE-DWELLINGS. CHAP. u. 
 
 In rude and unsettled times, such insular sites afforded 
 safe retreats, all communication with the main land being cut 
 off, except by boats, or by such wooden bridges as could be 
 easily removed. 
 
 The Swiss lake-dwellings seem first to have attracted 
 attention during the dry winter of 1853-4, when the lakes 
 and rivers sank lower than had ever been previously known, 
 and when the inhabitants of Meilen, on the Lake of Zurich, 
 resolved to raise the level of some ground and turn it into 
 land, by throwing mud upon it obtained by dredging in the 
 adjoining shallow water. During these dredging operations 
 they discovered a number of wooden piles deeply driven into 
 the bed of the lake, and among them a great many hammers, 
 axes, celts, and other instruments. All these belonged to the 
 stone period with two exceptions, namely, an armlet of thin 
 brass wire, and a small bronze hatchet. 
 
 Fragments of rude pottery fashioned by the hand were 
 abundant, also masses of charred wood, supposed to have 
 formed parts of the platform on which the wooden cabins 
 were built. Of this burnt timber, on this and other sites, 
 subsequently explored, there was such an abundance as to 
 lead to the conclusion that most of the settlements must 
 have perished by fire. Herodotus has recorded that the 
 Paeonians, above alluded to, preserved their independence 
 during the Persian invasion, and defied the attacks of Xerxes 
 by aid of the peculiar position of their dwellings. ' But their 
 safety,' observes Mr. Wylie, * ' was probably owing to their 
 living in the middle of the lake, lv p*s<ry ry A/^VJJ, whereas the 
 ancient Swiss settlers were compelled by the rapidly increas 
 ing depth of the water near the margins of their lakes to 
 construct their habitations at a short distance from the shore, 
 within easy bowshot of the land, and therefore not out of 
 
 * "W. M. "Wylie, M.A., Archaeology, vol. xxxvii., 1859, a valuable paper on the 
 Swiss and Irish lake-habitations. 
 
CHAP. II. ANCIENT SWISS LAKE-DWELLINGS. 19 
 
 reach of fiery projectiles, against which thatched roofs and 
 wooden walls could present but a poor defence.' To these 
 circumstances we are probably indebted for the frequent 
 preservation, in the mud around the site of the old settle 
 ments, of the most precious tools and works of art, such as 
 would never have been thrown into the Danish f shell- 
 mounds,' which have been aptly compared to a modern dust- 
 hole. 
 
 Dr. Ferdinand Keller of Zurich has drawn up a series of 
 most instructive memoirs, illustrated with well-executed 
 plates, of the treasures in stone, bronze, and bone brought to 
 light in these subaqueous repositories, and^has given an ideal 
 restoration of part of one of the old villages (see plate 1) ,* 
 such as he conceives may have existed on the Lakes of Zurich 
 and Bienne. In this view, however, he has not simply trusted 
 to his imagination, but has availed himself of a sketch pub 
 lished by M. Dumont d'Urville, of similar habitations of the 
 Papoos in New Guinea in the Bay of Dorei. It is also stated 
 by Dr. Keller, that on the Eiver Limmat, near Zurich, so late 
 as the last century, there were several fishing-huts constructed 
 on this same plan.f It will be remarked, that one of the 
 cabins is represented as circular. That such was the form of 
 many in Switzerland is inferred from the shape of pieces of 
 clay which lined the interior, and which owe their preserva 
 tion apparently to their having been hardened by fire when 
 the village was burnt. In the sketch, some fishing-nets are 
 seen spread out to dry on the wooden platform. The Swiss 
 archaeologist has found abundant evidence of fishing-gear, 
 consisting of pieces of cord, hooks, and stones used as weights. 
 A canoe also is introduced, such as are occasionally met with. 
 One of these, made of the trunk of a single tree, fifty feet long 
 
 * Keller, Pfahlbauten, Antiqua- 1862, Mr. Lubbock has published an 
 
 rische Gresellschaft in Zurich, Bd. xii. excellent account of the works of the 
 
 xiii. 1858-1861. In the fifth number of Swiss writers on their lake-habitations, 
 the Natural History Keview, January 9, f Keller, ibid. Bd. ix. p. 81, note. 
 
 c 2 
 
20 STONE AND BRONZE IMPLEMENTS. CHAP. IT. 
 
 and three and a half feet wide, was found capsized at the 
 bottom of the Lake of Bienne. It appears to have been 
 laden with stones, such as were used to raise the foundation 
 of some of the artificial islands. 
 
 It is believed that as many as 300 wooden huts were 
 sometimes comprised in one settlement, and that they may 
 have contained about 1000 inhabitants. At Wangen, M. 
 Lohle has calculated that 40,000 piles were used, probably 
 not all planted at one time nor by one generation. Among 
 the works of great merit devoted specially to a description of 
 the Swiss lake-habitations is that of M. Troyon, published in 
 I860.* The number of sites which he and other authors 
 have already enumerated in Switzerland is truly wonderful. 
 They occur on the large lakes of Constance, Zurich, Geneva 
 and Neufchatel, and on most of the smaller ones. Some are 
 exclusively of the stone age, others of the bronze period. Of 
 these last more than twenty are spoken of on the Lake of 
 Geneva alone, twelve on that of Neufchatel, and ten on the 
 small Lake of Bienne. 
 
 One of the sites first studied by the Swiss antiquaries was 
 the small lake of Moosseedorf, near Berne, where imple 
 ments of stone, horn, and bone, but none of metal, were 
 obtained. Although the flint here employed must have come 
 from a distance (probably from the South of France), the 
 chippings of the material are in such profusion as to imply 
 that there was a manufactory of implements on the spot. 
 Here also, as in several other settlements, hatchets and 
 wedges of jade have been observed of a kind said not to 
 occur in Switzerland or the adjoining parts of Europe, and 
 which some mineralogists would fain derive from the 
 East; amber also, which, it is supposed, was imported from 
 the shores of the Baltic. 
 
 At Wangen near Stein, on the Lake of Constance, another 
 
 * Sur les Habitations lacustres, 
 
CHAP. II. FOSSIL CEREALS AND OTHER PLANTS. 21 
 
 of the most ancient of the lake-dwellings, hatchets of serpen 
 tine and greenstone, and arrow-heads of quartz, have been 
 met with. Here also remains of a kind of cloth, supposed to 
 be of flax, not woven but plaited, have been detected. Pro 
 fessor Heer has recognised lumps of carbonized wheat, Triti- 
 cum vulgare, and grains of another kind, T. dicoccum, and 
 barley, Hordeum distichon, and flat round cakes of .bread, 
 showing clearly that in the stone period the lake-dwellers 
 cultivated all these cereals, besides having domesticated the 
 dog, the ox, the sheep, and the goat. 
 
 Carbonized apples and pears of small size, such as still 
 grow in the Swiss forests, stones of the wild plum, seeds of 
 the raspberry and blackberry, and beech-nuts, also occur in 
 the mud, and hazel-nuts in great plenty. 
 
 Near Morges, on the Lake of Geneva, a settlement of the 
 bronze period, no less than forty hatchets of that metal have 
 been dredged up, and in many other localities the number 
 and variety of weapons and utensils discovered, in a fine state 
 of preservation, is truly astonishing. 
 
 It is remarkable that as yet all the settlements of the 
 bronze period are confined to Western and Central Switzer 
 land. In the more eastern lakes those of the stone period 
 alone have as yet been discovered. 
 
 The tools, ornaments, and pottery of the bronze period in 
 Switzerland bear a close resemblance to those of correspond 
 ing age in Denmark, attesting the wide spread of a uniform 
 civilization over Central Europe at that era. In some few of 
 the aquatic stations, as well as in tumuli and battlefields 
 in Switzerland, a mixture of bronze and iron implements and 
 works of art have been observed, including coins and medals 
 of bronze and silver, struck at Marseilles, and of Greek 
 manufacture, belonging to the first and pre-Eoman division 
 of the age of iron. 
 
 In the settlements of the bronze era the wooden piles are 
 
22 EEMAINS OF MAMMALIA, WILD AND DOMESTICATED, CHAP. IT. 
 
 not so much decayed as are those of the stone period ; the 
 latter having wasted down quite to the level of the mud, 
 whereas the piles of the bronze age (as in the Lake of Bienne, 
 for example) still project above it. 
 
 Professor Kiitimeyer of Basle, well known to paleontologists 
 as the author of several important memoirs on fossil verte- 
 brata,. has recently published a scientific description of 
 great interest of the animal remains dredged up at various 
 stations where they had been embedded for ages in the mud 
 into which the piles were driven.* 
 
 These bones bear the same relation to the primitive 
 inhabitants of Switzerland and some of their immediate 
 successors as do the contents of the Danish ' refuse-heaps ' to 
 the ancient fishing and hunting tribes who lived on the 
 shores of the Baltic. 
 
 The list of wild mammalia enumerated in this excellent 
 treatise contains no less than twenty-four species, exclusive of 
 several domesticated ones : besides which there are eighteen 
 species of birds, the wild swan, goose, and two species of ducks 
 being among them ; also three reptiles, including the eatable 
 frog and fresh- water tortoise ; and lastly, nine species of fresh 
 water fish. All these (amounting to fifty-four species) are 
 with one exception still living in Europe. The exception 
 is the wild bull (Bos primigenius), which, as before stated, 
 survived in historical times. The following are the mammalia 
 alluded to : The bear ( Ursus Arctos), the badger, the com 
 mon marten, the polecat, the ermine, the weasel, the otter, 
 wolf, fox, wild cat, hedgehog, squirrel, field-mouse (Mus syl- 
 vaticus), hare, beaver, hog (comprising two races, namely, the 
 wild boar and swamp-hog), the stag (Cervus Elephas), the 
 roe-deer, the fallow-deer, the elk, the steinbock (Capra Ibex), 
 the chamois, the Lithuanian bison, and the wild bull. The 
 
 * Die Fauna der Pfahlbauten in der Schweiz. Basel, 1861. 
 
CHAP. II. IN SWISS LAKE-DWELLINGS. 23 
 
 domesticated species comprise the dog, horse, ass, pig, goat, 
 sheep, and several bovine races. 
 
 The greater number, if not all, of these animals served for 
 food, and all the bones which contained marrow have been split 
 open in the same way as the corresponding ones found in the 
 shell-mounds of Denmark before mentioned. The bones both 
 of the wild bull and the bison are invariably split in this 
 manner. As a rule, the lower jaws with teeth occur in greater 
 abundance than any other parts of the skeleton, a circum 
 stance which, geologists know, holds good in regard to fossil 
 mammalia of all periods. As yet the reindeer is missing 
 in the Swiss lake-settlements as in the Danish ' refuse-heaps,' 
 although this animal in more ancient times ranged over 
 France, together with the mammoth, as far south as the Py 
 renees. 
 
 A careful comparison of the bones from different sites has 
 shown that in settlements such as Wangen and Moosseedorf, 
 belonging to the earliest age of stone, when the habits of the 
 hunter state predominated over those of the pastoral, venison, 
 or the flesh of the stag and roe, was more eaten than the flesh 
 of the domestic cattle and sheep. This was afterwards re 
 versed in the later stone period and in the age of bronze. At 
 that later period also the tame pig, which is wanting in some 
 of the oldest stations, had replaced the wild boar as a common 
 article of food. In the beginning of the age of stone, in Swit 
 zerland, the goats outnumbered the sheep, but towards the 
 close of the same period the sheep were more abundant than 
 the goats. 
 
 The fox in the first era was very common, but it nearly 
 disappears in the bronze age, during which period a large 
 hunting-dog, supposed to have been imported into Switzerland 
 from some foreign country, becomes the chief representative 
 of the canine genus. 
 
 A single fragment of the bone of a hare (Lepus timidus) 
 
24 MAMMALIA IN SWISS LAKE-DWELLINGS. CHAP. n. 
 
 has been found at Moosseedorf. The almost universal absence 
 of this quadruped is supposed to imply that the Swiss lake- 
 dwellers were prevented from eating that animal by the same 
 superstition which now prevails among the Laplanders, and 
 which Julius Caesar found in full force amongst the ancient 
 Britons.* 
 
 That the lake-dwellers should have fed so largely on the 
 fox, while they abstained from touching the hare, establishes, 
 says Eiitimeyer, a singular contrast between their tastes and 
 ours. 
 
 Even in the earliest settlements, as already hinted, several 
 domesticated animals occur, namely, the ox, sheep, goat, and 
 dog. Of the three last, each was represented by one race 
 only ; but there were two races of cattle, the most common 
 being of small size, and called by Eiitimeyer Bos brachyceros 
 (Bos longifrons Owen), or the marsh cow, the other derived 
 from the wild bull ; though, as no skull has yet been disco 
 vered, this identification is not so certain as could be wished. 
 It is, however, beyond question that at a later era, namely, to 
 wards the close of the stone and beginning of the bronze period, 
 the lake-dwellers had succeeded in taming that formidable 
 brute the Bos primigenius, the Urus of Caesar, which he de 
 scribed as very fierce, swift, and strong, and scarcely inferior 
 to the elephant in size. In a tame state its bones were some 
 what less massive and heavy, and its horns were somewhat 
 smaller than in wild individuals. Still in its domesticated 
 form, it rivalled in dimensions the largest living cattle, those 
 of Friesland, in North Holland, for example. When most 
 abundant, as at Concise on the Lake of Neufchatel, it had 
 nearly superseded the smaller race, Bos brachyceros, and 
 was accompanied there for a short time by a third bovine 
 variety, called Bos trochoceros, an Italian race, supposed to 
 
 * Commentaries, lib. v. ch. 12. 
 
CHAP. II. MAMMALIA IN SWISS LAKE-DWELLINGS. 25 
 
 have been imported from the southern side of the Alps.* 
 This last-mentioned race, however, seems only to have lasted 
 for a short time in Switzerland. 
 
 The wild bull (Bos primigenius') is supposed to have 
 flourished for a while both in a wild and tame state, just 
 as now in Europe the domestic pig co-exists with the wild 
 boar ; and Biitimeyer agrees with Cuvier and Bell,f in con 
 sidering our larger domestic cattle of northern Europe as 
 the descendants of this wild bull, an opinion which Owen 
 disputes. J 
 
 In the later division of the stone period, there were two 
 tame races of the pig, according to Kutimeyer ; one large, 
 and derived from the wild boar, the other smaller, called the 
 ' marsh-hog,' or Sus Scrofa palustris. It may be asked how 
 the osteologist can distinguish the tame from wild races of the 
 same species by their skeletons alone. Among other cha 
 racters, the diminished thickness of the bones and the com 
 parative smallness of the ridges, which afford attachment to 
 the muscles, are relied on ; also the smaller dimensions of the 
 tusks in the boar, and of the whole jaw and skull ; and, in like 
 manner, the diminished size of the horns of the bull and other 
 modifications, which are the effects of a regular supply of food, 
 and the absence of all necessity of exerting their activity and 
 strength to obtain subsistence and defend themselves against 
 their enemies. 
 
 A middle-sized race of dogs continued unaltered through 
 out the whole of the stone period; but the people of the 
 bronze age possessed a larger hunting-dog, and with it a small 
 horse, of which genus very few traces have been detected 
 in the earlier settlements, a single tooth, for example, at 
 Wangen, and only one or two bones at two or three other places. 
 
 In passing from the oldest to the most modern sites, the 
 
 * Caesar's Commentaries, lib. v. ch. f British Quadrupeds, p. 415. 
 
 12, p. 161. j British Fossil Mammal, p. 500. 
 
26 NO EXTINCT SPECIES OF MAMMAL. CHIP. n. 
 
 extirpation of the elk and beaver, and the gradual reduction 
 in numbers of the bear, stag, roe, and fresh-water tortoise are 
 distinctly perceptible. The aurochs, or Lithuanian bison, ap 
 pears to have died out in Switzerland about the time when 
 weapons of bronze came into use. It is only in a few of the 
 most modern lake-dwellings, such as Noville and Chavannes 
 in the Canton de Vaud (which the antiquaries refer to 
 the sixth century), that some traces are observable of the 
 domestic cat, as well as of a sheep with crooked horns, and 
 with them bones of the domestic fowl. 
 
 After the sixth century, no extinction of any wild quad 
 ruped nor introduction of any tame one appears to have taken 
 place, but the fauna was still modified by the wild species con 
 tinuing to diminish in number and the tame ones to become 
 more diversified by breeding and crossing, especially in the 
 case of the dog, horse, and sheep. On the whole, however, 
 the divergence of the domestic races from their aboriginal 
 wild types, as exemplified at Wangen and Moosseedorf, is con 
 fined, according to Professor Riitimeyer, within narrow limits. 
 As to the goat, it has remained nearly constant and true to 
 its pristine form, and the small race of goat-horned sheep 
 still lingers in some Alpine valleys in the Upper Rhine; 
 and in the same region a race of pigs, corresponding to the 
 domesticated variety ofSus Scrofapalustris, may still be seen. 
 
 Amidst all this profusion of animal remains extremely few 
 bones of man have been discovered ; and only one skull, 
 dredged up from Meilen, on the Lake of Zurich, of the early 
 stone period, seems as yet to have been carefully examined. 
 Respecting this specimen, Professor His observes that it ex 
 hibits, instead of the small and rounded form proper to the 
 Danish peat-mosses, a type much more like that now pre 
 vailing in Switzerland, which is intermediate between the 
 long-headed and short-headed form.* 
 
 * Riitimeyer, Die Fauna der Pfahlbauten in der Schweiz, p. 181. 
 
CHAP. II. DATE OF BKONZE AND STONE PEEIODS. 27 
 
 So far, therefore, as we can draw safe conclusions from a 
 single specimen, there has been no marked change of race 
 in the human population of Switzerland during the periods 
 above considered. 
 
 It is still a question whether any of these subaqueous 
 repositories of ancient relics in Switzerland go back so far 
 in time as the shell-mounds of Denmark, for in these last 
 there are no domesticated animals except the dog, and no 
 signs of the cultivation of wheat or barley ; whereas we have 
 seen that, in one of the oldest of the Swiss settlements, at 
 Wangen, no less than three cereals make their appearance, 
 with four kinds of domestic animals. Yet there is no small 
 risk of error in speculating on the relative claims to an 
 tiquity of such ancient tribes, for some of them may have 
 remained isolated for ages and stationary in their habits, 
 while others advanced and improved. 
 
 We know that nations, both before and after the introduc 
 tion of metals, may continue in very different sta,ges of civi 
 lisation, even after commercial intercourse has been es 
 tablished between them, and where they are separated by 
 a less distance than that which divides the Alps from the 
 Baltic. 
 
 The attempts of the Swiss geologists and archeologists to es 
 timate definitely in years the antiquity of the bronze and stone 
 periods, although as yet confessedly imperfect, deserve notice, 
 and appear to me to be full of promise. The most elaborate 
 calculation is that made by M. Morlot, respecting the delta 
 of the Tiniere, a torrent which flows into the Lake of Geneva 
 near Villeneuve. This small delta, to which the stream is 
 annually making additions, is composed of gravel and sand. 
 Its shape is that of a flattened cone, and its internal structure 
 has of late been laid open to view in a railway cutting one 
 thousand feet long and thirty-two feet deep. The regularity 
 of its structure throughout implies that it has been formed 
 
28 DATE OF BRONZE AND STONE PERIODS. CHAP. n. 
 
 very gradually, and by the uniform action of the same causes. 
 Three layers of vegetable soil, each of which must at one time 
 have formed the surface of the cone, have been cut through 
 at different depths. The first of these was traced over a sur 
 face of 15,000 square feet, having an average thickness of 
 five inches, and being about four feet below the present surface 
 of the cone. This upper layer belonged to the Roman period, 
 and contained Roman tiles and a coin. The second layer, 
 followed over a surface of 25,000 square feet, was six inches 
 thick, and lay at a depth of ten feet. In it were found 
 fragments of unvarnished pottery and a pair of tweezers in 
 bronze, indicating the bronze epoch. The third layer, fol 
 lowed for 35,000 square feet, was six or seven inches thick, 
 and nineteen feet deep. In it were fragments of rude pottery, 
 pieces of charcoal, broken bones, and a human skeleton having 
 a small, round, and very thick skull. M. Morlot, assuming 
 the Roman period to represent an antiquity of from sixteen 
 to eighteen centuries, assigns to the bronze age a date of 
 between 3000 and 4000 years, and to the oldest layer, that of 
 the stone period, an age of from 5000 to 7000 years. 
 
 Another calculation has been made by M. Troyon to obtain 
 the approximate date of the remains of an ancient settle 
 ment built on piles and preserved in a peat-bog at Chamblon, 
 near Yverdun, on the Lake of Neufchatel. The site of the 
 ancient Roman town of Eburodunum (Yverdon), once on the 
 borders of the lake, and between which and the shore there 
 now intervenes a zone of newly-gained dry land, 2500 feet in 
 breadth, shows the rate at which the bed of the lake has been 
 filled up with river sediment in fifteen centuries. Assuming 
 the lake to have retreated at the same rate before the Roman 
 period, the pile-works of Chamblon, which are of the bronze 
 period, must be at the least 3300 years old. 
 
 For the third calculation, communicated to me by M. 
 Morlot, we are indebted to M. Victor Grillieron, of Neuve- 
 
CHAP. II. IRISH LAKE-DWELLINGS, OR CRANNOGES. 29 
 
 ville, on the Lake of Bienne. It relates to the age of a pile- 
 dwelling, the mammalian bones of which are considered by 
 M. Kiitimeyer to indicate the earliest portion of the stone 
 period of Switzerland, and to correspond in age with the 
 settlement of Moosseedorf. 
 
 The piles in question occur at the Pont de Thiele, be 
 tween the Lakes of Bienne and Neufchatel. The old con 
 vent of St. Jean, founded 750 years ago, and built originally 
 on the margin of the Lake of Bienne, is now at a con 
 siderable distance from the shore, and affords a measure 
 of the rate of the gain of land in seven centuries and a half. 
 Assuming that a similar rate of the conversion of water 
 into marshy land prevailed antecedently, we should re 
 quire an addition of sixty centuries for the growth of the 
 morass intervening between the convent and the aquatic 
 dwelling of Pont de Thiele, in all 6750 years. M. Morlot, 
 after examining the ground, thinks it highly probable that 
 the shape of the bottom on which the morass rests is 
 uniform ; but this important point has not yet been tested by 
 boring. The result, if confirmed, would agree exceedingly 
 well with the chronological computation before mentioned of 
 the age of the stone period of Tiniere. As I have not myself 
 visited Switzerland since these chronological speculations 
 were first hazarded, I am unable to enter critically into a 
 discussion of the objections which have been raised to the 
 two first of them, or to decide on the merits of the explanations 
 offered in reply. 
 
 Irish Lake-dwellings, or Crannoges. 
 
 The lake-dwellings of the British Isles, although not ex 
 plored as yet with scientific zeal, as those of Switzerland have 
 been in the last ten years, are yet known to be very nu 
 merous, and when carefully examined will not fail to throw 
 great light on the history of the bronze and stone periods. 
 
30 IRISH LAKE-DWELLINGS, OR CRANNOGES. CHAP. II. 
 
 In the lakes of Ireland alone, no less than forty-six exam 
 ples of artificial islands, called crannoges, have been dis 
 covered. They occur in Leitrim, Roscommon, Cavan, Down, 
 Monaghan, Limerick, Meath, King's County, and Tyrone.* 
 One class of these f stockaded islands,' as they have been 
 sometimes called, was formed, according to Mr. Digby Wyatt, 
 by placing horizontal oak beams at the bottom of the lake, 
 into which oak posts, from six to eight feet high, were mor 
 tised, and held together by cross beams, till a circular en 
 closure was obtained. 
 
 A space of 520 feet diameter, thus inclosed at Lagore, was 
 divided into sundry timbered compartments, which were found 
 filled up with mud or earth, from which were taken 'vast 
 quantities of the bones of oxen, swine, deer, goats, sheep, 
 dogs, foxes, horses and asses.' All these were discovered be 
 neath sixteen feet of bog, and were used for manure; but 
 specimens of them are said to be preserved in the museum 
 of the Royal Irish Academy. From the same spot were ob 
 tained a great collection of antiquities, which, according to 
 Lord Talbot de Malahide and Mr. Wylie, were refefeble to 
 the ages of stone, bronze, and iron.| 
 
 In Ardekillin Lake, in Roscommon, an islet of an oval form 
 was observed, made of a layer of stones resting on logs of 
 timber. Round this artificial islet or crannoge thus formed, 
 was a stone wall raised on oak piles. A careful description 
 has been put on record by Captain Mudge, R. N., of a curious 
 log-cabin discovered by him in 1833 in Drumkellin bog, in 
 Donegal, at a depth of fourteen feet from the surface. It was 
 twelve feet square and nine feet high, being divided into two 
 stories each four feet high. The planking was of oak split 
 with wedges of stone, one of which was found in the building. 
 The roof was flat. A staked inclosure had been raised round 
 
 * Wylie, p. 8. 
 
 f Ibid., p. 8, who cites Archaeological Journal, voL vi. p. 101. 
 
CHAP. II. IRISH LAKE-DWELLINGS, OR CRANNOGES. 31 
 
 the cabin, and remains of other similar huts adjoining were 
 seen but not explored. A stone celt, found in the interior of 
 the hut, and a piece of leather sandal, also an arrow-head of 
 flint, and in the bog close at hand a wooden sword, give 
 evidence of the remote antiquity of this building, which may 
 be taken as a type of the early dwellings on the Crannoge 
 islands. 
 
 ' The whole structure,' says Captain Mudge, ( was wrought 
 with the rudest kind of implements, and the labour bestowed 
 on it must have been immense. The wood of the mortises 
 was more bruised than cut, as if by a blunt stone chisel.' * 
 Such a chisel lay on the floor of the hut, and by comparing it 
 with the marks of the tool used in forming the mortises, they 
 were found ' to correspond exactly, even to the slight curved 
 exterior of the chisel ; but the logs had been hewn by 
 a larger instrument, in the shape of an axe. On the floor of 
 the dwelling lay a slab of freestone, three feet long and four 
 teen inches thick, in the centre of which was a small pit three 
 quarters of an inch deep, which had been chiselled out. This 
 is presumed to have been used for holding nuts to be cracked 
 by means of one of the round shingle stones, also found there, 
 which had served as a hammer. Some entire hazel-nuts and 
 a great quantity of broken shells were strewed about the 
 floor.' 
 
 The foundations of the house were made of fine sand, such 
 as is found with shingle on the sea-shore about two miles 
 distant. Below the layer of sand the bog or peat was ascer 
 tained, on probing it with an instrument, to be at least fifteen 
 feet thick. Although the interior of the building when dis 
 covered was full of e bog ' or peaty matter, it seems when in 
 habited to have been surrounded by growing trees, some of 
 the trunks and roots of which are still preserved in their 
 
 * Mudge, Archseologia, vol. xxvi. 
 
32 IRISH LAKE-DWELLINGS, OR CRANNOGES. CHAP. n. 
 
 natural position. The depth of overlying peat affords no safe 
 criterion for calculating the age of the cabin or village, for I 
 have shown in the ' Principles of Geology' (ch. xlvi.j, that both 
 in England and Ireland, within historical times, bogs have 
 burst and sent forth great volumes of black mud, which has 
 been known to creep over the country at a slow pace, flow 
 ing somewhat at the rate of ordinary lava-currents, and some 
 times overwhelming woods and cottages, and leaving a deposit 
 upon them of bog-earth fifteen feet thick. 
 
 None of these Irish lake-dwellings were built, like those 
 of Helvetia, on platforms supported by piles deeply driven 
 into the mud. f The Crannoge system of Ireland seems,' 
 says Mr. Wylie, 'well nigh without a parallel in Swiss 
 waters.' 
 
CHAP. in. DELTA AND ALLUVIAL PLAIN OF THE NILE. 33 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 FOSSIL HUMAN KEMAINS AND WORKS OF ART OF THE 
 RECENT PERIOD, 
 
 Continued. 
 
 DELTA AND ALLUVIAL PLAIN OF THE NILE BURNT BRICKS IN EGYPT 
 
 BEFORE THE ROMAN ERA BORINGS IN 1851-54 ANCIENT MOUNDS 
 
 OF THE VALLEY OF THE OHIO THEIR ANTIQUITY SEPULCHRAL 
 
 MOUND AT SANTOS IN BRAZIL DELTA OF THE MISSISSIPPI ANCIENT 
 
 HUMAN REMAINS IN CORAL REEFS OF FLORIDA CHANGES IN PHYSICAL 
 
 GEOGRAPHY IN THE HUMAN PERIOD BURIED CANOES IN MARINE 
 
 STRATA NEAR GLASGOW UPHEAVAL SINCE THE ROMAN OCCUPATION 
 
 OF THE SHORES OF THE FIRTH OF FORTH FOSSIL WHALES NEAR 
 STIRLING UPRAISED MARINE STRATA OF SWEDEN ON SHORES OF THE 
 BALTIC AND THE OCEAN ATTEMPTS TO COMPUTE THEIR AGE. 
 
 Delta and Alluvial Plain of the Nile. 
 
 SOME new facts of high interest illustrating the geology of 
 the alluvial land of Egypt were brought to light between 
 the years 1851 and 1854, in consequence of investigations 
 suggested to the Eoyal Society by Mr. Leonard Homer, and 
 which were partly carried out at the expense of the Society. 
 The practical part of the undertaking was entrusted by Mr. 
 Homer to an Armenian officer of engineers, Hekekyan Bey, 
 who had for many years pursued his scientific studies in 
 England, and was in every way highly qualified for the task. 
 It was soon found that to obtain the required information 
 respecting the nature, depth, and contents of the Nile mud 
 in various parts of the valley, a larger outlay was called for 
 than had been originally contemplated. This expense the 
 late viceroy, Abbas Pacha, munificently undertook to defray 
 
34 DELTA AND ALLUVIAL PLAIN OF THE NILE. CHAP. in. 
 
 out of his treasury, and his successor, after his death, con 
 tinued the operations with the same princely liberality. 
 
 Several engineers and a body of sixty workmen were 
 employed under the superintendence of Hekekyan Bey, men 
 inured to the climate, and able to carry on the sinking of 
 shafts and borings during the hot months, after the waters 
 of the Nile had subsided, and in a season which would have 
 been fatal to Europeans. 
 
 The results of chief importance arising out of this enquiry 
 were obtained from two sets of shafts and borings sunk at 
 intervals in lines crossing the great valley from east to west. 
 One of these consisted of no less than fifty-one pits and 
 artesian perforations, made where the valley is sixteen miles 
 wide from side to side between the Arabian and Lybian 
 deserts, in the latitude of Heliopolis, about eight miles above 
 the apex of the delta. The other line of borings and pits, 
 twenty-seven in number, was in the parallel of Memphis, 
 where the valley is only five miles broad. 
 
 Everywhere in these sections the sediment passed through 
 was similar in composition to the ordinary Nile mud of the 
 present day, except near the margin of the valley, where thin 
 layers of quartzose sand, such as is sometimes blown from the 
 adjacent desert by violent winds, was observed to alternate 
 with the loam. 
 
 A remarkable absence of lamination and stratification was 
 observed almost universally in the sediment brought up from 
 all points except where the sandy layers above alluded to oc 
 curred, the mud agreeing closely in character with the ancient 
 loam of the Ehine, called loess. Mr. Horner attributes this 
 want of all indication of successive deposition to the ex 
 treme thinness of the film of matter which is thrown down 
 annually on the great alluvial plain during the season of in 
 undation. The tenuity of this layer must indeed be extreme, 
 if the French engineers are tolerably correct in their estimate 
 
CHAP. III. DELTA AND ALLUYIAL PLAIN OP THE NILE. 35 
 
 of the amount of sediment formed in a century, which they 
 suppose not to exceed on the average five inches. When the 
 waters subside, this thin layer of new soil, exposed to a hot sun, 
 dries rapidly, and clouds of dust are raised by the winds. The 
 superficial deposit, moreover, is disturbed almost everywhere 
 by agricultural labours, and even were this not the case, the 
 action of worms, insects, and the roots of plants would suffice 
 to confound together the deposits of two successive years. 
 
 All the remains of organic bodies, such as land-shells, and 
 the bones of quadrupeds, found during the excavations be 
 longed to living species. Bones of the ox, hog, dog, dromedary, 
 and ass were not uncommon, but no vestiges of extinct mam 
 malia. No marine shells were anywhere detected ; but this 
 was to be expected, as the borings, though they sometimes 
 reached as low as the level of the Mediterranean, were never 
 carried down below it, a circumstance much to be regretted, 
 since where artesian perforations have been made in deltas, 
 as in those of the Po and Granges, to the depth of several 
 hundred feet below the sea level, it has been found, contrary 
 to expectation, that the deposits passed through were fluvia- 
 tile throughout, implying, probably, that a general subsidence 
 of those deltas and alluvial formations has taken place. 
 Whether there has been in like manner a sinking of the land in 
 Egypt, we have as yet no means of proving ; but Sir Gardner 
 Wilkinson infers it from the position in the delta on the shore 
 near Alexandria of the tombs commonly called Cleopatra's 
 Baths, which cannot, he says, have been originally built so as 
 to be exposed to the sea which now fills them, but must have 
 stood on land above the level of the Mediterranean. The same 
 author adduces, as additional signs of subsidence, some ruined 
 towns, now half under water, in the Lake Menzaleh, and 
 channels of ancient arms of the Nile submerged with their 
 banks beneath the waters of that same lagoon. 
 
 In some instances, the excavations made under the super- 
 
 D 2 
 
36 BORINGS IN EGYPT IN 1851-1858. CHAP. in. 
 
 intendence of Hekekyan Bey were on a large scale for the 
 first sixteen or twenty-four feet, in which cases jars, vases, 
 pots, and a small human figure in burnt clay, a copper knife, 
 and other entire articles were dug up ; but when water soaking 
 through from the Nile was reached, the boring instrument used 
 was too small to allow of more than fragments of works of art 
 being brought up. Pieces of burnt brick and pottery were 
 extracted almost everywhere, and from all depths, even where 
 they sank sixty feet below the surface towards the central parts 
 of the valley. In none of these cases did they get to the bottom 
 of the alluvial soil. It has been objected, among other criti 
 cisms, that the Arabs can always find whatever their employers 
 desire to obtain. Even those who are too well acquainted with 
 the sagacity and energy of Hekekyan Bey to suspect him of 
 having been deceived, have suggested that the artificial objects 
 might have fallen into old wells which had been filled up. 
 This notion is inadmissible for many reasons. Of the ninety- 
 five shafts and borings, seventy or more were made far from 
 the sites of towns or villages ; and allowing that every field 
 may once have had its well, there would be but small chance 
 of the borings striking upon the site even of a email number 
 of them in seventy experiments. 
 
 Others have suggested that the Nile may have wandered 
 over the whole valley, undermining its banks on one side 
 and filling up old channels on the other. It has also been 
 asked whether the delta with the numerous shifting arms of 
 the river may not once have been at every point where 
 the auger pierced.* To all these objections there are two 
 obvious answers: First, in historical times the Nile has on 
 the whole been very stationary, and has not shifted its position 
 in the valley ; secondly, if the mud pierced through had been 
 thrown down by the river in ancient channels, it would have 
 
 * For a detailed account of these Philosophical Transactions for 1855- 
 sections, see Mr. Horner's paper in the 1858. 
 
CHAP. m. BORINGS IN EGYPT IN 1851-1858. 37 
 
 been stratified, and would not have corresponded so closely 
 with inundation mud. We learn from Captain Newbold that 
 he observed in some excavations in the great plain alternations 
 of sand and clay, such as are seen in the modern banks of the 
 Nile ; but in the borings made by Hekekyan Bey, such strati 
 fication seems scarcely in any ease to have been detected. 
 
 The great aim of the criticisms above enumerated has been 
 to get rid of the supposed anomaly of finding burnt brick and 
 pottery at depths and places which would give them claim 
 to an antiquity far exceeding that of the Eoman domination 
 in Egypt. For until the time of the Eomans, it is said, no 
 clay was burnt into bricks in the valley of the Nile. But a 
 distinguished antiquary, Mr. S. Birch, assures me that this 
 notion is altogether erroneous, and that he has under his 
 charge in the British Museum, first, a small rectangular baked 
 brick, which came from a Theban tomb, which bears the 
 name of Thothmes, a superintendent of the granaries of the god 
 Amen Ea, the style of art, inscription, and name, showing that 
 it is as old as the 18th dynasty (about 1450 B.C.) ; secondly, 
 an arched brick, or one which with others made up an arch, 
 having an inscription, partly obliterated, but ending with the 
 words ' of the temple of Amen Ea.' This brick, decidedly 
 long anterior to the Eoman dominion, is referred conjec- 
 turally, by Mr. Birch, to the 19th dynasty, or 1300 B.C. 
 
 M. Grirard, of the French expedition to Egypt, supposed 
 the average rate of the increase of Nile mud on the plain 
 between Asouan and Cairo to be five English inches in a 
 century. This conclusion, according to Mr. Horner, is very 
 vague, and founded on insufficient data; the amount of 
 matter thrown down by the waters in different parts of the 
 plain varying so much, that to strike an average with any 
 approach to accuracy must be most difficult. Were we to 
 assume six inches in a century, the burnt brick met with at a 
 depth of sixty feet would be 12,000 years old. 
 
38 BORINGS IN EGYPT IN 1851-1858. CHAP. m. 
 
 Another fragment of red brick was found by Linant Bey, 
 in a boring seventy-two feet deep, being two or three feet 
 below the level of the Mediterranean, in the parallel of 
 the apex of the delta, 200 metres distant from the river, 
 on the Libyan side of the Eosetta branch.* M. Eosiere, 
 in the great French work on Egypt, has estimated the 
 mean rate of deposit of sediment in the delta at two inches 
 and three lines in a century f ; were we to take two and a 
 half inches, a work of art seventy-two feet deep must have 
 been buried more than 30,000 years ago. But if the boring 
 of Linant Bey was made where an arm of the river had been 
 silted up at a time when the apex of the delta was somewhat 
 farther south, or more distant from the sea than now, the 
 brick in question might be comparatively very modern. 
 
 The experiments instituted by Mr. Homer, in the hope of 
 obtaining an accurate chronometric scale for testing the age 
 of a given thickness of Nile sediment, are not considered by 
 experienced Egyptologists to have been satisfactory. The 
 point sought to be determined was the exact amount of Nile 
 mud which had accumulated in 3000 or more years, since the 
 time when certain ancient monuments, such as the obelisk 
 at Heliopolis, or the statue of king Eamesses at Memphis, 
 are supposed by some antiquaries to have been erected. 
 Could we have obtained possession of such a measure, 
 the rate of deposition might be judged of, approximately 
 at least, whenever similar mud was observed in other 
 places, or below the foundations of those same monu 
 ments. But the ancient Egyptians are known to have been 
 in the habit of enclosing with embankments, the areas on 
 which they erected temples, statues, and obelisks, so as to 
 exclude the waters of the Nile ; and the point of time to be 
 ascertained, in every case where we find a monument buried 
 
 * Horner, Philosophical Transactions, 1858. 
 
 f Description de 1'Egypte (Histoire Naturelle, torn. ii. p. 494). 
 
CHAP. III. ANCIENT MOUNDS OF VALLEY OF THE OHIO. 39 
 
 to a certain depth in mud, as at Memphis and Heliopolis, is 
 the era when the city fell into such decay that the ancient 
 embankments were neglected, and the river allowed to in 
 undate the site of the temple, obejisk, or statue. 
 
 Even if we knew the date of the abandonment of such 
 embankments, the enclosed areas would not afford a favour 
 able opportunity for ascertaining the average rate of deposit 
 in the alluvial plain ; for Herodotus tells us that in his time 
 those spots from which the Nile waters had been shut out 
 for centuries appeared sunk, and could be looked down into 
 from the surrounding grounds, which had been raised by the 
 gradual accumulation over them of sediment annually thrown 
 down. If the waters at length should break into such de 
 pressions, they must at first carry with them into the enclosure 
 much mud washed from the steep surrounding banks, so that 
 a greater quantity would be deposited in a few years than 
 perhaps in as many centuries on the great plain outside the 
 depressed area, where no such disturbing causes intervened. 
 
 Ancient Mounds of the Valley of the Ohio. 
 
 As I have already given several European examples of 
 monuments of pre-historic date belonging to the recent 
 period, I will now turn to the American continent. Before 
 the scientific investigation by Messrs. Squier and Davis of the 
 6 Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley,'* no one 
 suspected that the plains of that river had been occupied, for 
 ages before the French and British colonists settled there, by 
 a nation of older date, and more advanced in the arts than 
 the Eed Indians whom the Europeans found there. There 
 are hundreds of large mounds in the basin of the Mississippi, 
 and especially in the valleys of the Ohio and its tributaries, 
 which have served, some of them for temples, others for out- 
 
 * Smithsonian Contributions, vol. i., 1847. 
 
40 ANTIQUITY OF THE OHIO MOUNDS. CHAP. in. 
 
 look or defence, and others for sepulture. The unknown 
 people by whom they were constructed, judging by the form 
 of several skulls dug out of the burial-places, were of the 
 Mexican or Toltecan race. Some of the earthworks are on 
 so grand a scale as to embrace areas of fifty or a hundred 
 acres within a simple enclosure, and the solid contents of 
 one mound are estimated at twenty millions of cubic feet, so 
 that four of them would be more than equal in bulk to the 
 Great Pyramid of Egypt, which comprises seventy-five 
 millions. From several of these repositories pottery and 
 ornamental sculpture have been taken, and various ar 
 ticles in silver and copper, also stone weapons, some com 
 posed of hornstone unpolished, and much resembling in 
 shape some ancient flint implements found near Amiens and 
 other places in Europe, to be alluded to in the sequel. 
 
 It is clear that the Ohio mound-builders had commercial 
 intercourse with the natives of distant regions, for among 
 the buried articles some are made of native copper from 
 Lake Superior, and there are also found mica from the 
 Alleghanies, sea-shells from the Gulf of Mexico, and obsidian 
 from the Mexican mountains. 
 
 The extraordinary number of the mounds implies a long 
 period, during which a settled agricultural population had 
 made considerable progress in civilization, so as to require large 
 temples for their religious rites, and extensive fortifications to 
 protect them from their enemies. The mounds were almost all 
 confined to fertile valleys or alluvial plains, and some at least 
 are so ancient, that rivers have had time since their con 
 struction to encroach on the lower terraces which support 
 them, and again to recede for the distance of nearly a mile, 
 after having undermined and destroyed a part of the works. 
 When the first European settlers entered the valley of the 
 Ohio, they found the whole region covered with an uninter 
 rupted forest, and tenanted by the Eed Indian hunter, who 
 
CHIP. ill. ANTIQUITY OF THE OHIO MOUNDS. 41 
 
 roamed over it without any fixed abode, or any traditionary 
 connection with his more civilized predecessors. The only 
 positive data as yet obtained for calculating the minimum of 
 time which must have elapsed since the mounds were aban 
 doned, has been derived from the age and nature of the 
 trees found growing on some of these earthworks. When I 
 visited Marietta in 1842, Dr. Hildreth took me to one of 
 the mounds, and showed me where he had seen a tree grow 
 ing on it, the trunk of which when cut down displayed eight 
 hundred rings of annual growth.* But the late General 
 Harrison,, President in 1841 of the United States, who was well 
 skilled in woodcraft, has remarked, in a memoir on this sub 
 ject, that several generations of trees must have lived and 
 died before the mounds could have been overspread with 
 that variety of species which they supported when the white 
 man first beheld them, for the number and kinds of trees 
 were precisely the same as those which distinguished the 
 surrounding forest. f We may be sure,' observed Harrison, 
 ( that no trees were allowed to grow so long as the earthworks 
 were in use ; and when they were forsaken, the ground, like all 
 newly cleared land in Ohio, would for a time be monopolised 
 by one or two species of tree, such as the yellow locust and 
 the ft lack or white walnut. When the individuals which were 
 the first to get possession of the ground had died out one 
 after the other, they would in many cases, instead of being 
 replaced by the same species, be succeeded (by virtue of the 
 law which makes a rotation of crops profitable in agriculture) 
 by other kinds, till at last, after a great number of centuries 
 (several thousand years, perhaps), that remarkable diversity 
 of species characteristic of North America, and far exceeding 
 what is seen in European forests, would be established.' 
 
 * Lyell's Travels in North America, vol. ii. p. 29. 
 
42 MOUNDS OF SANTOS IN BRAZIL. CHAP. m. 
 
 Mounds of Santos in Brazil. 
 
 I will next say a few words respecting certain human 
 bones embedded in a solid rock at Santos in Brazil, to which 
 I called attention in my Travels in America in 1842.* I then 
 imagined the deposit containing them to be of submarine 
 origin, an opinion which I have long ceased to entertain. 
 We learn from a memoir of Dr. Meigs, that the River Santos 
 nas undermined a large mound, fourteen feet in height, and 
 about three acres in area, covered with trees, near the town 
 of St. Paul, and has exposed to view many skeletons, all 
 inclined at angles between 20 and 25, and all placed in a 
 similar east and west position.f Seeing, in the Museum of 
 Philadelphia, fragments of the calcareous stone or tufa from 
 this spot, containing a human skull with teeth, and in the 
 same matrix, oysters with serpulse attached, I at first con 
 cluded that the whole deposit had been formed beneath the 
 waters of the sea, or at least, that it had been submerged after 
 its origin, and again upheaved; also, that there had been 
 time since its emergence for the growth on it of a forest of 
 large trees. But after reading again, with more care, the 
 original memoir of Dr. Meigs, I cannot doubt that the shells, 
 like those of eatable kinds, so often accumulated in the 
 mounds of the North American Indians not far from the 
 sea, may have been brought to the place and heaped up with 
 other materials at the time when the bodies were buried. 
 Subsequently, the whole artificial earthwork, with its shells 
 and skeletons, may have been bound together into a solid 
 stone by the infiltration of carbonate of lime, and the mound 
 may therefore be of no higher antiquity than some of those 
 above alluded to on the Ohio, which, as we have seen, have in 
 like manner been exposed in the course of ages to the 
 encroachments and undermining action of rivers. 
 
 * Vol. i. p. 200. f Meigs, Trans. Amer. Phil. Soc., 1828, p. 285. 
 
CHAP. III. DELTA OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 43 
 
 Delta of the Mississippi. 
 
 I have shown in my Travels in North America that the 
 deposits forming the delta and alluvial plain of the Missis 
 sippi consist of sedimentary matter, extending over an area of 
 30,000 square miles, and known in some parts to be several 
 hundred feet deep. Although we cannot estimate correctly 
 how many years it may have required for the river to bring 
 down from the upper country so large a quantity of earthy 
 matter the data for such a computation being as yet 
 incomplete we may still approximate to a minimum of the 
 time which such an operation must have taken, by ascertain 
 ing experimentally the annual discharge of water by the 
 Mississippi, and the mean annual amount of solid matter 
 contained in its waters. The lowest estimate of the time 
 required would lead us to assign a high antiquity, amounting 
 to many tens of thousands of years (probably more than 
 100,000) to the existing delta. 
 
 Whether all or how much of this formation may belong to 
 the recent period, as above denned, I cannot pretend to 
 decide, but in one part of the modern delta near New 
 Orleans, a large excavation has been made for gas-works, 
 where a succession of beds, almost wholly made up of 
 vegetable matter, has been passed through, such as we now 
 see forming in the cypress swamps of the neighbourhood, 
 where the deciduous cypress (Taxodium distichum), with its 
 strong and spreading roots, plays a conspicuous part. In this 
 excavation, at the depth of sixteen feet from the surface, 
 beneath four buried forests superimposed one upon the other, 
 the workmen are stated by Dr. B. Dowler to have found 
 some charcoal and a human skeleton, the cranium of which 
 is said to belong to the aboriginal type of the Eed Indian 
 race. As the discovery in question had not been made 
 when I saw the excavation in progress at the gas-works in 
 
44 COKAL REEFS OF FLORIDA. CHAP. III. 
 
 1846, 1 cannot form an opinion as to the value of the chrono 
 logical calculations which have led Dr. Dowler to ascribe to 
 this skeleton an antiquity of 50,000 years. In several sec 
 tions, both natural in the banks of the Mississippi and its 
 numerous arms, and where artificial canals had been cut, I ob 
 served erect stumps of trees, with their roots attached, buried 
 in strata at different heights, one over the other. I also re 
 marked, that many cypresses which had been cut through, 
 exhibited many hundreds of rings of annual growth, and 
 it then struck me that nowhere in the world could the geo 
 logist enjoy a more favourable opportunity for estimating in 
 years the duration of certain portions of the recent epoch.* 
 
 Coral Reefs of Florida. 
 
 Professor Agassiz has described a low portion of the penin 
 sula of Florida as consisting of numerous reefs of coral, which 
 have grown in succession so as to give rise to a continual 
 annexation of land, gained gradually from the sea in a 
 southerly direction. This growth is still in full activity, and 
 assuming the rate of advance of the land to be one foot in a 
 century, the reefs being built up from a depth of seventy-five 
 feet, and that each reef has in its turn added ten miles to the 
 coast, Professor Agassiz calculates that it has taken 135,000 
 years to form the southern half of this peninsula. Yet the 
 whole is of post-tertiary origin, the fossil zoophytes and shells 
 being all of the same species as those now inhabiting the 
 neighbouring sea.f In a calcareous conglomerate forming 
 part of the above-mentioned series of reefs, and supposed by 
 Agassiz, in accordance with his mode of estimating the rate of 
 growth of those reefs, to be about 10,000 years old, some 
 
 * Dowler, cited by Dr. W. Usher, f Agassiz, in Nott and G-liddon, 
 
 in Nott and Gliddon's Types of Man- ibid. p. 352. 
 kind, p. 352. 
 
CHAP. III. KECENT DEPOSITS OP SEAS AND LAKES. 45 
 
 fossil human remains were found by Count PourtaKs. They 
 consisted of jaws and teeth, with some bones of the foot. 
 
 Recent Deposits of Seas and Lakes. 
 
 I have shown, in the Principles of Greology, where the 
 recent changes of the earth illustrative of geology are de 
 scribed at length, that the deposits accumulated at the 
 bottom of lakes and seas within the last 4000 or 5000 years 
 can neither be insignificant in volume or extent. They lie 
 hidden, for the most part, from our sight; but we have 
 opportunities of examining them at certain points where 
 newly-gained land in the deltas of rivers has been cut through 
 during floods, or where coral reefs are growing rapidly, or 
 where the bed of a sea or lake has been heaved up by sub 
 terranean movements and laid dry. 
 
 As examples of such changes of level by which marine 
 deposits of the recent period have become accessible to human 
 observation, I have adduced the strata near Naples in which 
 the Temple of Serapis at Pozzuoli was entombed.* These 
 upraised strata, the highest of which are about twenty-five 
 feet above the level of the sea, form a terrace skirting the 
 eastern shore of the Bay of Baiae. They consist partly of 
 clay, partly of volcanic matter, and contain fragments of 
 sculpture, pottery, and the remains of buildings, together 
 with great numbers of shells, retaining in part their colour, 
 and of the same species as those now inhabiting the neigh 
 bouring sea. Their emergence can be proved to have taken 
 place since the beginning of the sixteenth century. 
 
 In the same work, as an example of a fresh-water deposit 
 of the recent period, I have described certain strata in 
 Cashmere, a country where violent earthquakes, attended by 
 
 * Principles of Geology, Index, ' Serapis.' 
 
46 CHANGES IN PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. CHAP. in. 
 
 alterations in the level of the ground, are frequent, in which 
 fresh-water shells of species now inhabiting the lakes and 
 rivers of that region are embedded, together with the remains 
 of pottery, often at the depth of fifty feet, and in which a 
 splendid Hindoo temple has lately been discovered, and laid 
 open to view by the removal of the lacustrine silt which had 
 enveloped it for four or five centuries. 
 
 In the same treatise (ch. xxix.) it is stated, that the west 
 coast of South America, between the Andes and the Pacific, 
 is a great theatre of earthquake movements, and that per 
 manent upheavals of the land of several feet at a time have 
 been experienced since the discovery of America. In various 
 parts of the littoral region of Chili and Peru, strata have 
 been observed enclosing shells in abundance, all agreeing 
 specifically with those now swarming in the Pacific. In one 
 bed of this kind, in the island of San Lorenzo, near Lima, 
 Mr. Darwin found, at the altitude of eighty-five feet above the 
 sea, pieces of cotton-thread, plaited rush, and the head of a 
 stalk of Indian corn, the whole of which had evidently been 
 embedded with the shells. At the same height, on the neigh 
 bouring mainland, he found other signs corroborating the 
 opinion that the ancient bed of the sea had there also been 
 uplifted eighty-five feet since the region was first peopled by 
 the Peruvian race. But similar shelly masses are also met with 
 at much higher elevations, at innumerable points between 
 the Chilian and Peruvian Andes and the sea-coast, in which 
 no human remains have as yet been observed. The pre 
 servation for an indefinite period of such perishable sub 
 stances as thread is explained by the entire absence of rain 
 in Peru. The same articles, had they been enclosed in the 
 permeable sands of an European raised beach, or in any 
 country where rain falls even for a small part of the year, 
 would probably have disappeared entirely. 
 
 In the literature of the last century, we find frequent allu- 
 
CHAP. III. UPHEAVAL OF CENTRAL DISTRICT OF SCOTLAND. 47 
 
 sion to the ' era of existing continents,' a period supposed to 
 have coincided in date with the first appearance of man upon 
 the earth, since which event it was imagined that the relative 
 level of the sea and land had remained stationary, no im 
 portant geographical changes having occurred, except some 
 slight additions to the deltas of rivers, or the loss of narrow 
 strips of land where the sea had encroached upon its shores. 
 But modern observations have tended continually to dispel 
 this delusion, and the geologist is now convinced that at no 
 given era of the past have the boundaries of land and sea, or 
 the height of the one and depth of the other, or the geogra 
 phical range of the species inhabiting them, whether of animals 
 or plants, become fixed and unchangeable. Of the extent to 
 which fluctuations have been going on since the globe had 
 already become the dwelling-place of man, some idea may be 
 formed from the examples which I shall give in this and the 
 next nine chapters. 
 
 Upheaval since the Human Period of the Central 
 District of Scotland. 
 
 It has long been a fact familiar to geologists, that, both on 
 the east and west coasts of the central part of Scotland, there 
 are lines of raised beaches, containing marine shells of the 
 same species as those now inhabiting the neighbouring sea.* 
 The two most marked of these littoral deposits occur at 
 heights of about forty and twenty-five feet above high-water 
 mark, that of forty feet being considered as the more ancient, 
 and owing its superior elevation to a longer continuance of 
 the upheaving movement. They are seen in some places to 
 rest on the boulder clay of the glacial period, which will be 
 described in future chapters. 
 
 * R. Chambers, ' Sea Margins ; ' Jordan Hill, Mem. Wern. Soc. vol. 
 1848, and papers by Mr. Smith of viii., and by Mr. C. Maclaren. 
 
48 BURIED CANOES IN THE YALLEY OF THE CLYDE. CHAP. in. 
 
 In those districts where large rivers, such as the Clyde, 
 Forth, and Tay, enter the sea, the lower of the two deposits, 
 or that of twenty-five feet, expands into a terrace fringing 
 the estuaries, and varying in breadth from a few yards to 
 several miles. Of this nature are the flat lands which occur 
 along the margin of the Clyde at Glasgow, which consist of 
 finely laminated sand, silt, and clay. Mr. John Buchanan, 
 a zealous antiquary, writing in 1855, informs us, that in the 
 course of the eighty years preceding that date, no less than 
 seventeen canoes had been dug out of this estuarine silt, and 
 that he had personally inspected a large number of them 
 before they were exhumed. Five of them lay buried in silt 
 under the streets of Grlasgow, one in a vertical position with 
 the prow uppermost as if it had sunk in a storm. In the 
 inside of it were a number of marine shells. Twelve other 
 canoes were found about a hundred yards back from the 
 river, at the average depth of about nineteen feet from the 
 surface of the soil, or seven feet above high-water mark ; but 
 a few of them were only four or five feet deep, and conse 
 quently more than twenty feet above the sea-level. One was 
 sticking in the sand at an angle of 45, another had been 
 capsized, and lay bottom uppermost ; all the rest were in a 
 horizontal position, as if they had sunk in smooth water.* 
 
 Nearly all of 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. Hence a gradation could be 
 traced from a pattern of extreme rudeness to one showing 
 no small mechanical ingenuity. Two of them were built of 
 planks, one of which, dug up on the property of Bankton 
 in 1853, was eighteen feet in length, and very elaborately 
 constructed. Its prow was not unlike the beak of an antique 
 
 * GK Buchanan, Brit. Ass. Eep. 1855, p. 80 ; also Glasgow, Past and Present, 
 1856. 
 
CHAP. III. UPHEAVAL OF THE SHORES OF THE FIRTH OF FORTH. 49 
 
 galley ; its stern, formed of a triangular-shaped piece of oak, 
 fitted in exactly like those of our day. The planks were 
 fastened to the ribs, partly by singularly shaped oaken pins, 
 and partly by what must have been square nails of some 
 kind of metal ; these had entirely disappeared, but some of 
 the oaken pins remained. This boat had been upset, and 
 was lying keel uppermost, with the prow pointing straight up 
 the river. In one of the canoes, a beautifully polished celt 
 or axe of greenstone was found, in the bottom of another a 
 plug of cork, which, as Mr. Greikie remarks, " could only have 
 come from the latitudes of Spain, Southern France, or Italy." * 
 
 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. The 
 occurrence of all of them in one and the same upraised 
 marine formation by no means implies that they belong 
 to the same era, for in the beds of all great rivers and 
 estuaries, there are changes continually in progress brought 
 about by the deposition, removal, and redeposition of gravel, 
 sand, and fine sediment, and by the shifting of the channel 
 of the main currents from year to year, and from century to 
 century. All these it behoves the geologist and antiquary 
 to bear in mind, so as to be always on their guard, when 
 they are endeavouring to settle the relative date, whether of 
 objects of art or of organic remains embedded in any set 
 of alluvial strata. Some judicious observations on this head 
 occur in Mr. Greikie's memoir above cited, which are so much 
 in point that I shall give them in full, and in his own words. 
 
 ( The relative position in the silt, from which the canoes 
 were exhumed, could help us little in any attempt to ascer- 
 
 * Geikie, G-eol. Quart. Jcnirn. vol. xviii., p. 224. 
 E 
 
50 MK. GEIKIE ON UPHEAVAL OF CHAP. in. 
 
 tain their relative ages, unless they had been found vertically 
 above each other. The varying depths of an estuary, its 
 banks of silt and sand, the set of its currents, and the in 
 fluence of its tides in scouring out alluvium from some parts 
 of its bottom and redepositing it in others, are circumstances 
 which require to be taken into account in all such calculations. 
 Mere coincidence of depth from the present surface of the 
 ground, which is tolerably uniform in level, by no means 
 necessarily proves contemporaneous deposition. Nor would 
 such an inference follow even from the occurrence of the 
 remains in distant parts of the very same stratum. A canoe 
 might be capsized and sent to the bottom just beneath low- 
 water mark ; another might experience a similar fate on the 
 following day, but in the middle of the channel. Both 
 would become silted up on the floor of the estuary ; but as 
 that floor would be perhaps twenty feet deeper in the centre 
 than towards the margin of the river, the one canoe might 
 actually be twenty feet deeper in the alluvium than the other ; 
 and on the upheaval of the alluvial deposits, if we were to 
 argue merely from the depth at which the remains were 
 embedded, we should pronounce the canoe found at the one 
 locality to be immensely older than the other, seeing that the 
 fine mud of the estuary is deposited very slowly and that it 
 must therefore have taken a long period to form so great a 
 thickness as twenty feet. Again, the tides and currents of 
 the estuary, by changing their direction, might sweep away 
 a considerable mass of alluvium from the bottom, laying bare 
 a canoe that may have foundered many centuries before. 
 After the lapse of so long an interval, another vessel might go 
 to the bottom in the same locality, and be there covered up 
 with the older one, on the same general plane. These two 
 vessels, found in such a position, would naturally be classed 
 together as of the same age, and yet it is demonstrable that a 
 very loDg period may have elapsed between the date of the 
 
CHAP. in. CENTEAL DISTEICT OF SCOTLAND. .',1 
 
 one and that of the other. Such an association of these 
 canoes, therefore, cannot be regarded as proving synchronous 
 deposition ; nor, on the other hand can we affirm any 
 difference of age from mere relative position, unless we see 
 one canoe actually buried beneath another.'* 
 
 At the time when the ancient vessels, above described, 
 were navigating the waters, where the city of Glasgow now 
 stands, the whole of the low lands which bordered the 
 present estuary of the Clyde, formed the bed of a shallow 
 sea. The emergence appears to have taken place gradually 
 and by intermittent movements, for Mr. Buchanan describes 
 several narrow terraces one above the other on the site of the 
 city itself, with steep intervening slopes composed of the 
 laminated estuary formation. Each terrace and steep slope 
 probably mark pauses in the process of upheaval, during 
 which low cliffs were formed, with beaches at their base. 
 Five of the canoes were found within the precincts of the 
 city at different heights on or near such terraces. 
 
 As to the date of the upheaval, the greater part of it 
 cannot be assigned to the stone period, but must have taken 
 place after tools of metal had come into use. 
 
 Until lately, when attempts were made to estimate the 
 probable antiquity of such changes of level, it was confidently 
 assumed, as a safe starting-point, that no alteration had oc 
 curred in the relative level of land and sea, in the central 
 district of Scotland, since the construction of the Eoman or 
 Pictish wall (the ' Wall of Antonine '), which reached from 
 the Firth of Forth to that of the Clyde. The two extremities, 
 it was said, of this ancient structure, bear such a relation to 
 the present level of the two estuaries, that neither subsidence 
 nor elevation of the land could have occurred for seven 
 teen centuries at least. 
 
 But Mr. G-eikie has lately shown that a depression of 
 
 * Geikie, Geol. Quart. Journ. vol. xviii., p. 222. 1862. 
 E 2 
 
52 INFERENCES FROM RECENT EXPLORATIONS. CHAP. in. 
 
 twenty-five feet on the Forth would not lay the eastern 
 extremity of the Eoman wall at Carriden under water, and 
 he was therefore desirous of knowing whether the western 
 end of the same would be submerged by a similar amount of 
 subsidence. It has always been acknowledged that the wall 
 terminated upon an eminence called the Chapel Hill, near 
 the village of West Kilpatrick, on the Clyde. The foot of 
 this hill, Mr. Greikie estimates to be about twenty-five or 
 twenty-seven feet above high-water mark, so that a subsi 
 dence of twenty-five feet could not lay it under water. Anti 
 quaries have sometimes wondered that the Eomans did not 
 carry the wall farther west than this Chapel Hill ; but Mr. 
 Greikie now suggests, in explanation, that all the low land 
 at present intervening between that point and the mouth of 
 the Severn, was, sixteen or seventeen centuries ago, washed 
 by the tides at high water. 
 
 The wall of Antonine, therefore, yields no evidence in 
 favour of the land having remained stationary since the time 
 of the Komans, but on the contrary, appears to indicate that 
 since its erection the land has actually risen. Eecent explo 
 rations by Mr. Geikie and Dr. Young, of the sites of the old 
 Roman harbours along the southern margin of the Firth of 
 Forth, lead to similar inferences. In the first place, it has 
 long been known that there is a raised beach containing 
 marine shells of living littoral species, about twenty-five feet 
 high, at Leith, as well as at other places along the coast above 
 and below Edinburgh. Inveresk, a few miles below that city, 
 is the site of an ancient Eoman port, and if we suppose the 
 sea at high water to have washed the foot of the heights on 
 which the town stood, the tide would have ascended far up 
 the valley of the Esk, and would have made the mouth of 
 that river a safe and commodious harbour ; whereas, had it 
 been a shoaling estuary, as at present, it is difficult to see 
 how the Eomans should have made choice of it as a port. 
 
CHAP. in. FOSSIL WHALES NEAR STIRLING. 53 
 
 At Cramond, at the mouth of the river Almond, above 
 Edinburgh, was Alaterva, the chief Eoman harbour on the 
 southern coast of the Forth, where numerous coins, urns, 
 sculptured stones, and the remnant of a harbour have been 
 detected. The old Eoman quays built along what must then 
 have been the sea margin, have been found on what is now dry 
 land, and although some silt carried down in suspension by 
 the waters of the Forth may account for a part of the gain 
 of low land, we yet require an upward movement of about 
 twenty feet to explain the growth of the dreary expanse of 
 mud now stretching along the shore and extending out 
 wards, where it attains its greatest breadth, well-nigh two 
 miles, across which vessels, even of light burden can now 
 only venture at full tide. Had these shoals existed eighteen 
 centuries ago, they would have prevented the Eomans from 
 selecting this as their chief port ; whereas, if the land were 
 now to sink twenty feet, Cramond would unquestionably be 
 the best natural harbour along the whole of the south side of 
 the Forth.* 
 
 Corresponding in level with the raised beach at Leith, 
 above mentioned (or about twenty-five feet above high- water 
 mark), is the Carse of Stirling, a low tract of land consisting 
 of loamy and peaty beds, in which several skeletons of whales 
 of large size have been found. One of these was dug up 
 at Airthrief, near Stirling, about a mile from the river, and 
 seven miles from the sea. Mr. Bald mentions, that near it 
 were found two pieces of stag's horn, artificially cut, through 
 one of which a hole, about an inch in diameter, had been per 
 forated. Another whale, eighty-five feet long, was found at 
 Dimmore, a few miles below Stirling J, which, like that of 
 Airthrie, lay about twenty feet above high-water mark. Three 
 
 * Greikie, Edinb. New Phil. Journ. "Wernerian Society, iii. p. 327. 
 for July 1861. J Edinburgh Philosophical Jour- 
 
 f Bald, Edinburgh Philosophical nal, xi. pp. 220, 415. 
 Journal, i. p. 393; and Memoirs, 
 
54 UPRAISED MARINE STRATA. CHAP. ill. 
 
 other skeletons of whales were found at Blair Drummond, 
 between the years 1819 and 1824, seven miles up the estuary 
 above Stirling*, also at an elevation of between twenty and 
 thirty feet above the sea. Near two of these whales, pointed 
 instruments of deer's horn were found, one of which retained 
 part of a wooden handle, probably preserved by having been 
 enclosed in peat. This weapon is now in the museum at 
 Edinburgh. 
 
 The position of these fossil whales and bone implements, 
 and still more of an iron anchor found in the Carse of Falkirk, 
 below Stirling, shows that the upheaval by which the 
 raised beach of Leith was laid dry extended far westward 
 probably as far as the Clyde, where, as we have seen, marine 
 strata containing buried canoes rise to a similar height above 
 the sea. 
 
 The same upward movement which reached simultaneously 
 east and west from sea to sea was also felt as far north as 
 the estuary of the Tay. This may be inferred from the Celtic 
 name of Inch being attached to many hillocks, which rise 
 above the general level of the alluvial plains, implying that 
 these eminences were once surrounded by water or marshy 
 ground. At various localities also in the silt of the Carse 
 of Growrie iron implements have been found. 
 
 The raised beach, also containing a great number of marine 
 shells of recent species, traced up to a height of fourteen feet 
 above the sea by Mr. W. J. Hamilton at Elie, on the 
 southern coast of Fife, is doubtless another effect of the 
 same extensive upheaval. f A similar movement would also 
 account for some changes which antiquaries have recorded 
 much farther south, on the borders of the Solway Frith ; 
 though in this case, as in that of the estuary of the Forth, 
 the conversion of sea into land has always been referred 
 
 * Memoirs, Wernerian Society, r. f Proceedings of Geological Society, 
 p. 440. 1833, vol. ii. p. 280. 
 
CHAP. m. PROBABLE AGE OF UPRAISED STRATA. 55 
 
 to the silting up of estuaries, and not to upheaval. Thus 
 Horsley insists on the difficulty of explaining the position of 
 certain Eoman stations, on the Solway, the Forth, and the 
 Clyde, without assuming that the sea has been excluded from 
 certain areas which it formerly occupied.* 
 
 On a review of the whole evidence, geological and archaBo- 
 logical, afforded by the Scottish coast-line, we may conclude 
 that the last upheaval of twenty-five feet took place not only 
 since the first human population settled in the island ; but 
 long after metallic implements had come into use, and there 
 seems even a strong presumption in favour of the opinion 
 that the date of the elevation may have been subsequent to 
 the Eoman occupation. 
 
 But the twenty-five feet rise is only the last stage of a long 
 antecedent process of elevation, for examples of recent marine 
 shells have been observed forty feet and upwards above the sea 
 in Ayrshire. At one of these localities, Mr. Smith of Jordan- 
 hill informs me that a rude ornament made of cannel coal 
 has been found on the coast in the parish of Dundonald, 
 lying fifty feet above the sea-level, on the surface of the 
 boulder-clay or till, and covered with gravel, containing 
 marine shells. If we suppose the upward movement to 
 have been uniform in central Scotland before and after the 
 Eoman era, 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. 
 
 But all such estimates must be considered, in the present 
 state of science, as tentative and conjectural, since the rate 
 of movement of the land may not have been uniform, and its 
 
 * Britannia, p. 157. I860. 
 
56 UPRAISED STRATA IN SWEDEN AND NORWAY. CHAP. m. 
 
 direction not always upwards, and there may have been long 
 stationary periods, one of which of more than usual duration 
 seems indicated by the forty foot raised beach, which has 
 been traced for vast distances along the western coast of 
 Scotland. 
 
 Coast of Cornwall. 
 
 Sir H. De la Beche has adduced several proofs of changes 
 of level, in the course of the human period, in his ' Report on 
 the Geology of Cornwall and Devon for 1839.' He mentions 
 (p. 406) that several human skulls and works of art, buried 
 in an estuary deposit, were found in mining gravel for tin, at 
 Pertuan, the skulls lying at the depth of forty feet from the 
 surface, and others at Carnon, at the depth of fifty-three feet. 
 The overlying strata were marine, containing sea-shells of 
 living species, and bones of whales, besides the remains of 
 several living species of mammalia. 
 
 Other examples of works of art, such as stone hatchets, 
 canoes, and ships, buried in ancient river-beds in England, 
 and in peat and shell-marl, I have mentioned in my work 
 before cited.* 
 
 Sweden and Norway. 
 
 In the same work I have shown that near Stockholm, in 
 Sweden, there occur, at slight elevations above the sea-level, 
 horizontal beds of sand, loam, and marl, containing the same 
 peculiar assemblage of testacea which now live in the brackish 
 waters of the Baltic. Mingled with these, at different depths, 
 have been detected various works of art implying a rude state 
 of civilization, and some vessels built before the introduction of 
 iron, and even the remains of an ancient hut, the whole ma 
 rine formation having been upraised, so that the upper beds 
 
 * Principles of Geology. 
 
CHAP. Hi. UPRAISED STRATA IN SWEDEN AND NORWAY. 57 
 
 are now sixty feet higher than the surface of the Baltic. In 
 the neighbourhood of these recent strata, both to the north 
 west and south of Stockholm, other deposits similar in mineral 
 composition occur, which ascend to greater heights, in which 
 precisely the same assemblage of fossil shells is met with, but 
 without any intermixture, so far as is yet known, of human 
 bones or fabricated articles. 
 
 On the opposite or western coast of Sweden, at Uddevalla, 
 post-tertiary strata, containing recent shells, not of that 
 brackish water character peculiar to the Baltic, but such as 
 now live in the Northern Ocean, ascend to the height of 
 200 feet; and beds of clay and sand of the same age attain 
 elevations of 300 and even 600 feet in Norway, where they 
 have been usually described as ' raised beaches.' They are, 
 however, thick deposits of submarine origin, spreading far 
 and wide, and filling valleys in the granite and gneiss, just 
 as the tertiary formations, in different parts of Europe, cover 
 or fill depressions in the older rocks. 
 
 Although the fossil fauna characterising these upraised 
 sands and clays consists exclusively of existing northern 
 species of testacea, it is more than probable that they may 
 not all belong to that division of the post-tertiary strata 
 which we are now considering. If the contemporary mam 
 malia were known, they would, in all likelihood, be found to 
 be referable, at least in part, to extinct species ; for, according 
 to Loven (an able living naturalist of Norway), the species 
 do not constitute such an assemblage as now inhabits corre 
 sponding latitudes in the Grerman Ocean. On the contrary, 
 they decidedly represent a more arctic fauna. In order to 
 find the same species nourishing in equal abundance, or in 
 many cases to find them at all, we must go northwards to 
 higher latitudes than Uddevalla in Sweden, or even nearer 
 the pole than Central Norway. 
 
 Judging by the uniformity of climate now prevailing from 
 
58 UPRAISED STRATA IN SWEDEN AND NORWAY. CHAP. III. 
 
 century to century, and the insensible rate of variation in. 
 the geographical distribution of organic beings in our own 
 times, we may presume that an extremely lengthened period 
 was required, even for so slight a modification in the range 
 of the. molluscous fauna, as that of which the evidence is 
 here brought to light. There are also other independent 
 reasons for suspecting that the antiquity of these deposits 
 may be indefinitely great as compared to the historical 
 period. I allude to their present elevation above the sea, 
 some of them rising, in Norway, to the height of 600 feet 
 or more. The upward movement now in progress in parts 
 of Norway and Sweden, extends, as I have elsewhere shown*, 
 throughout an area about 1000 miles north and south, and 
 for an unknown distance east and west, the amount of eleva 
 tion always increasing as we proceed towards the North Cape, 
 where it is said to equal five feet in a century. If we could 
 assume that there had been an average rise of two and a half 
 feet in each hundred years for the last fifty centuries, this 
 would give an elevation of 125 feet in that period. In other 
 words, it would follow that the shores, and a considerable 
 area of the former bed of the North Sea, had been uplifted 
 vertically to that amount, and converted into land in the 
 course of the last 5000 years. A mean rate of continuous 
 vertical elevation of two and a half feet in a century would, 
 I conceive, be a high average ; yet, even if this be assumed, 
 it would require 24,000 years for parts of the sea-coast of 
 Norway, where the post-tertiary marine strata occur, to attain 
 the height of 600 feet. 
 
 * Principles, 9th ed. ch. xxx. 
 
CHAP. iv. DISCOVERIES OF MM. TOUENAL AND CHRISTOL. 59 
 
 CHAPTEK IV. 
 
 POST-PLIOCENE PERIOD BONES OF MAN AND EXTINCT 
 
 MAMMALIA IN BELGIAN CAVERNS. 
 
 EARLIEST DISCOVERIES IN CAVES OF LANGUEDOC OF HUMAN REMAINS 
 
 WITH BONES OF EXTINCT MAMMALIA RESEARCHES IN 1833 OF 
 
 DR. SCHMERLINQ IN THE LIEGE CAVERNS SCATTERED PORTIONS OF 
 
 HUMAN SKELETONS ASSOCIATED WITH BONES OF ELEPHANT AND 
 
 RHINOCEROS DISTRIBUTION AND PROBABLE MODE OF INTRODUCTION 
 
 OF THE BONES IMPLEMENTS OF FLINT AND BONE SCHMERLING's 
 
 CONCLUSIONS AS TO THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN IGNORED PRESENT 
 
 STATE OF THE BELGIAN CAVES HUMAN BONES RECENTLY FOUND IN 
 
 CAVE OF ENGIHOUL ENGULFED RIVERS STALAGMITIC CRUST 
 
 ANTIQUITY OF THE HUMAN REMAINS IN BELGIUM HOW PROVED. 
 
 HAVING- hitherto considered those formations in which 
 both the fossil shells and the mammalia are of living 
 species, we may now turn our attention to those of older 
 date, in which the shells being all recent, some of the ac 
 companying mammalia are extinct, or belong to species not 
 known to have lived within the times of history or tradition. 
 
 Discoveries of MM. Tournal and Christol in 1828, in the 
 South of France. ' 
 
 In the Principles of Geology, when treating of the 
 fossil remains found in alluvium, and the mud of caverns, I 
 gave an account in 1832 of the investigations made by 
 MM. Tournal and Christol in the South of France.* 
 
 M. Tournal stated in his memoir, that in the cavern of 
 Bize, in the department of the Aude, he had found human 
 bones and teeth, together with fragments of rude pottery, in 
 
 * let ed. vol. ii. ch. xiv., 1832 ; and 9th ed. p. 738, 1853. 
 
60 DISCOVERIES OF MM. TOURNAL AND CHRISTOL. CHAP. iv. 
 
 the same mud and breccia cemented by stalagmite in which 
 land-shells of living species were embedded, and the bones 
 of mammalia, some of extinct, others of recent species. The 
 human bones were declared by his fellow-labourer, M. Marcel 
 de Serres, to be in the same chemical condition as those of 
 the accompanying quadrupeds.* 
 
 Speaking of these fossils of the Bize cavern five years 
 later, M. Tournal observed, that they could not be referred, 
 as some suggested, to a ' diluvial catastrophe,' for they 
 evidently had not been washed in suddenly by a transient 
 flood, but must have been introduced gradually, together 
 with the enveloping mud and pebbles, at successive periods. f 
 
 M. Christol, who was engaged at the same time in 
 similar researches in another part of Languedoc, published an 
 account of them a year later, in which he described some 
 human bones, as occurring in the cavern of Pondres, near 
 Nismes, in the same mud with the bones of an extinct hyaena 
 and rhinoceros. :f The cavern was in this instance filled up 
 to the roof with mud and gravel, in which fragments of two 
 kinds of pottery were detected, the lowest and rudest near 
 the bottom of the cave, below the level of the extinct mam 
 malia. 
 
 It has never been questioned that the hysena and rhinoceros 
 found by M. Christol were of extinct species ; but whether 
 the animals enumerated by M. Tournal might not all of them 
 be referred to quadrupeds which are known to have been 
 living in Europe in the historical period seems doubtful. 
 They were said to consist of a stag, an antelope, and a goat, 
 all named by M. Marcel de Serres as new; but the majority 
 of paleontologists do not agree with this opinion. Still it is 
 true, as M. Lartet remarks, that the fauna of the cavern of 
 
 * Annales des Sciences Naturelles, J Christol, Notice surles Ossements 
 
 torn. xv. p. 348 : 1 828. humains des Cavernes du Gard. Mont- 
 
 f Annales de Chimie et de Phy- pellier, 1829. 
 sique, p. 161 : 1833. 
 
CHAP. iv. DESNOYERS ON HUMAN AND OTHER CAVE BONES. 61 
 
 Bize must be of very high antiquity, as shown by the pre 
 sence, not only of the Lithuanian aurochs (Bison europoeus), 
 but also of the reindeer, which has not been an inhabitant 
 of the South of France in historical times, and which, in that 
 country, is almost everywhere associated, whether in ancient 
 alluvium or in the mud of caverns, with the mammoth. 
 
 In my> work before cited *, I stated that M. Desnoyers, 
 an observer equally well versed in geology and archaeology, 
 had disputed the conclusion arrived at by MM. Tournal and 
 Christol, that the fossil rhinoceros, hysena, bear, and other 
 lost species, had once been inhabitants of France contem 
 poraneously with man. * The flint hatchets and arrow-heads ' 
 he said, ' and the pointed bones and coarse pottery of many 
 French and English caves, agree precisely in character with 
 those found in the tumuli, and under the dolmens (rude 
 altars of unhewn stone) of the primitive inhabitants of Gaul, 
 Britain, and Germany. The human bones, therefore, in the 
 caves which are associated with such fabricated objects, must 
 belong not to antediluvian periods, but to a people in the 
 same stage of civilization as those who constructed the 
 tumuli and altars.' 
 
 f In the Gaulish monuments,' he added, f we find, together 
 with the objects of industry above mentioned, the bones of 
 wild and domestic animals of species now inhabiting Europe, 
 particularly of deer, sheep, wild boars, dogs, horses, and 
 oxen. This fact has been ascertained in Quercy, and other 
 provinces ; and it is supposed by antiquaries that the animals 
 in question were placed beneath the Celtic altars in memory 
 of sacrifices offered to the Gaulish divinity Hesus, and in the 
 tombs to commemorate funeral repasts, and also from a 
 superstition prevalent among savage nations, which induces 
 them to lay up provisions for the manes of the dead in a 
 
 * Principles, 9th eel. p. 739. 
 
62 DESNOYERS ON HUMAN AND OTHER CAVE BONES. CHAP. iv. 
 
 future life. But in none of these ancient monuments have 
 any bones been found of the elephant, rhinoceros, hyaena, 
 tiger, and other quadrupeds, such as are found in caves, 
 which might certainly have been expected, had these species 
 continued to flourish at the time that this part of Gaul was 
 inhabited by man.'* 
 
 After giving no small weight to the arguments of M. Des- 
 noyers, and the writings of Dr. Buckland on the same subject, 
 and visiting myself several caves in Germany, I came to the 
 opinion that the human bones mixed with those of extinct 
 animals, in osseous breccias and cavern mud, in different 
 parts of Europe, were probably not coeval. The caverns 
 having been at one period the dens of wild beasts, and having 
 served at other times as places of human habitation, worship, 
 sepulture, concealment, or defence, one might easily conceive 
 that the bones of man and those of animals, which were 
 strewed over the floors of subterranean cavities, or which 
 had fallen into tortuous rents connecting them with the 
 surface, might, when swept away by floods, be mingled in 
 one promiscuous heap in the same ossiferous mud or 
 breccia.f 
 
 That such intermixtures have really taken place in some 
 caverns, and that geologists have occasionally been deceived, 
 and have assigned to one and the same period fossils which 
 had really been introduced at successive times, will readily 
 be conceded. But of late years we have obtained convincing 
 proofs, as we shall see in the sequel, that the mammoth, and 
 many other extinct mammalian species very common in caves, 
 occur also in undisturbed alluvium, embedded in such a 
 manner with works of art, as to leave no room for doubt 
 that man and the 'mammoth coexisted. Such discoveries have 
 
 * Desnoyers, Bulletin de la Societe Universelle d'Histoire Naturelle. Pa- 
 Geologique de France, torn. ii. p. 252 ; ris, 1845. 
 and article on Caverns, Dictionnaire t Principles, 9th ed. p. 740. 
 
CHAP. IV. DR. SCHMERLING ON HUMAN AND OTHER BONES. 63 
 
 led me, and other geologists, to reconsider the evidence pre 
 viously derived from caves "brought forward in proof of 
 the high antiquity of man. With a view of re-examining 
 this evidence, I have lately explored several caverns in 
 Belgium and other countries, and re-read the principal 
 memoirs and treatises treating of the fossil remains preserved 
 in them, the results of which inquiries I shall now proceed 
 to lay before the reader. 
 
 Researches, in 1833-1834, of Dr. Schmerling in the Caverns 
 near Liege. 
 
 The late Dr. Schmerling of Liege, a skillful anatomist and 
 paleontologist, after devoting several years to the exploring 
 of the numerous ossiferous caverns which border the valleys 
 of the Meuse and its tributaries, published two volumes, 
 descriptive of the contents of more than forty caverns. One 
 of these volumes consisted of an atlas of plates, illustrative of 
 the fossil bones.* 
 
 Many of the caverns had never before been entered by 
 scientific observers, and their floors were encrusted with 
 unbroken stalagmite. At a very early stage of his investiga 
 tions, Dr. Schmerling found the bones of man so rolled and 
 scattered, as to preclude all idea of their having been inten 
 tionally buried on the spot. He also remarked that they were 
 of the same colour, and in the same condition as to the amount 
 of animal matter contained in them, as those of the accom 
 panying animals, some of which, like the cave-bear, hysena, 
 elephant, and rhinoceros, were extinct ; others, like the wild 
 cat, beaver, wild boar, roe-deer, wolf, and hedgehog, still extant. 
 The fossils were lighter than fresh bones, except such as had 
 their pores filled with carbonate of lime, in which case they 
 
 * Kecherches sur les Ossements fos- a Province de Liege. Liege, 1833 
 siles decouverts dans les Cavernes de 1834. 
 
64 HUMAN AND OTHER BONES IN LIE*GE CAVERNS. CHAP. iv. 
 
 were often much heavier. The human remains of most 
 frequent occurrence were teeth detached from the jaw, and 
 the carpal, metacarpal, tarsal, metatarsal, and phalangial 
 bones separated from the rest of the skeleton. The cor 
 responding bones of the cave-bear, the most abundant of 
 the accompanying mammalia, were also found in the Liege 
 caverns more commonly than any others, and in the same 
 scattered condition. Occasionally, some of the long bones of 
 mammalia were observed to have been first broken across, 
 and then reunited or cemented again by stalagmite, as they 
 lay on the floor of the cave. 
 
 No gnawed bones nor any coprolites were found by 
 Schmerling. He therefore inferred that the caverns of the 
 province of Liege had not been the dens of wild beasts, 
 but that their organic and inorganic contents had been swept 
 into them by streams communicating with the surface of the 
 country. The bones, he suggested, may often have been 
 rolled in the beds of such streams before they reached their 
 underground destination. To the same agency the intro 
 duction of many land-shells dispersed through the cave-mud 
 was ascribed, such as Helix nemoralis, H. lapicida, H. po- 
 matia, and others of living species. Mingled with such shells, 
 in some rare instances, the bones of fresh-water fish, and of a 
 snake (Coluber\ as well as of several birds, were detected. 
 
 The occurrence here and there of bones in a very perfect 
 state, or of several bones belonging to the same skeleton in 
 natural juxtaposition, and having all their most delicate 
 apophyses uninjured, while many accompanying bones in the 
 same breccia were rolled, broken, or decayed, was accounted 
 for by supposing that portions of carcasses were sometimes 
 floated in during floods while still clothed with their flesh. 
 No example was discovered of an entire skeleton, not even of 
 one of the smaller mammalia, the bones of which are usually 
 the least injured. 
 
CHAP. iv. REMAINS IN THE ENGIS AND ENGIHOUL CAYES. 65 
 
 The incompleteness of each skeleton was especially ascer 
 tained in regard to the human subjects, Dr. Schmerling being 
 careful, whenever a fragment of such presented itself, to explore 
 the cavern himself, and see whether any other bones of the 
 same skeleton could be found. In the Engis cavern, distant 
 about eight miles to the south-west of Liege, on the left bank of 
 the Meuse, the remains of at least three human individuals were 
 disinterred. The skull of one of these, that of a young 
 person, was embedded by the side of a mammoth's tooth. It 
 was entire, but so fragile, that nearly all of it fell to pieces 
 during its extraction. Another skull, that of an adult in 
 dividual (see fig. 2, p. 81), and the only one preserved by Dr. 
 Schmerling in a sufficient state of integrity to enable the 
 anatomist to speculate on the race to which it belonged, was 
 buried five feet deep in a breccia, in which the tooth of a 
 rhinoceros, several bones of a horse, and some of the rein 
 deer, together with some ruminants, occurred. This skull, 
 now in the museum of the University of Liege, is figured in 
 Chap. V., where further observations will be offered on its 
 anatomical character, after a fuller account of the contents 
 of the Liege caverns has been laid before the reader. 
 
 On the right bank of the Meuse, on the opposite side of 
 the river to Engis, it the cavern of Engihoul. Both were 
 observed to abound greatly in the bones of extinct animals 
 mingled with those of man ; but with this difference, that 
 whereas in the Engis cave there were several human crania 
 and very few other bones, in Engihoul there occurred nu 
 merous bones of the extremities belonging to at least three 
 human individuals, and only two small fragments of a 
 cranium. The like capricious distribution held good in 
 other caverns, especially with reference to the cave-bear, the 
 most frequent of the extinct mammalia. Thus, for example in 
 the cave of Chokier, skulls of the bear were few, and other 
 parts of the skeleton abundant, whereas in several other 
 
 F 
 
66 IMPLEMENTS OF FLINT AND BONE. CHAP. IV. 
 
 caverns these proportions were exactly reversed, while at 
 Groffontaine skulls of the bear and other parts of the skeleton 
 were found in their natural numerical proportions. Speaking 
 generally, it may be said that human bones, where any were 
 met with, occurred at all depths in the cave-mud and gravel, 
 sometimes above and sometimes below those of the bear, 
 elephant, rhinoceros, hysena, &c. 
 
 Some rude flint implements of the kind commonly called 
 flint knives or flakes, of a triangular form in the cross section 
 (as in fig. 14, p. 118), were found by Schmerling dispersed 
 generally through the cave-mud, but he was too much en 
 grossed with his osteological inquiries to collect them dili 
 gently. He preserved some few of them, however, which I 
 have seen in the museum at Liege. He also discovered in the 
 cave of Chokier, two and a half miles south-west from Liege, a 
 polished and jointed needle-shaped bone, with a hole pierced 
 obliquely through it at the base ; such a cavity, he observed, 
 as had never given passage to an artery. This instrument 
 was embedded in the same matrix with the remains of a 
 rhinoceros.* 
 
 Another cut bone and several artificially shaped flints were 
 found in the Engis cave, near the human skulls before alluded 
 to. Schmerling observed, and we shall have to refer to the 
 fact in the sequel (Chap. VIII.), that although in some forty 
 fossiliferous caves explored by him human bones were the 
 exception, yet these flint implements were universal, and he 
 added that ' none of them could have been subsequently in 
 troduced, being precisely in the same position as the remains 
 of the accompanying animals.' ( I therefore,' he continues, 
 ( attach great importance to their presence ; for even if I had 
 not found the human bones under conditions entirely favour 
 able to their being considered as belonging to the ante- 
 
 * Schmerling, part ii. p. 177. 
 
CHAP. iv. DR. SCHMERLING ON LIEGE CAVERNS. 67 
 
 diluvian epoch, proofs of man's existence would still have 
 been supplied by the cut bones and worked flints.' * 
 
 Dr. Schmerling, therefore, had no hesitation in concluding 
 from the various facts ascertained by him, that man once 
 lived in the Liege district contemporaneously with the cave- 
 bear, and several other extinct species of quadrupeds. But 
 he was much at a loss when he attempted to invent a 
 theory to explain the former state of the fauna of the region 
 now drained by the Meuse ; for he shared the notion, then 
 very prevalent among naturalists, that the mammoth and the 
 hysenaf were beasts of a warmer climate than that now 
 proper to Western Europe. In order to account for the 
 presence of such ' tropical species,' he was half-inclined to 
 imagine that they had been transported by a flood from some 
 distant region ; then again he raised the question whether 
 they might not have been washed out of an older alluvium, 
 which may have pre-existed in the neighbourhood. This last 
 hypothesis was directly at variance with his own statements, 
 that the remains of the mammoth and hysena were identical 
 in appearance, colour, and chemical condition with those of 
 the bear and other associated fossil animals, none of which 
 exhibited signs of having been previously enveloped in any 
 dissimilar matrix. Another enigma which led Schmerling 
 astray in some of his geological speculations was the supposed 
 presence of the agouti, a South-American rodent, 'proper 
 to the torrid zone.' My friend M. Lartet, guided by Schmer- 
 ling's figures of the teeth of this species, suggests, and I have 
 little doubt with good reason, that they appertain to the 
 porcupine, a genus found fossil in post-pliocene deposits of 
 certain caverns in the south of France. 
 
 In the year 1833, I passed through Liege, on my way to 
 the Ehine, and conversed with Dr. Schmerling, who showed 
 
 * Schmerling, partii. p. 179. t Ibid, part ii. pp. 70, 96. 
 
 F 2 
 
68 SCHMEELING ON ANTIQUITY OF MAN. CHAP. iv. 
 
 me his splendid collection, and when I expressed some 
 incredulity respecting the alleged antiquity of the fossil 
 human bones, he pointedly remarked, that if I doubted their 
 having been contemporaneous with the bear or rhinoceros, 
 on the ground of man being a species of more modern date, 
 I ought equally to doubt the coexistence of all the other 
 living species, such as the red deer, roe, wild cat, wild boar, 
 wolf, fox, weasel, beaver, hare, rabbit, hedgehog, mole, dor 
 mouse, field-mouse, water-rat, shrew, and others, the bones 
 of which he had found scattered everywhere indiscriminately 
 through the same mud with the extinct quadrupeds. The 
 year after this conversation I cited Schmerling's opinions, 
 and the facts bearing on the antiquity of man, in the 3rd 
 edition of my Principles of Geology (p. 161, 1834), and in 
 succeeding editions, without pretending to call in question 
 their trustworthiness, but at the same time without giving 
 them the weight which I now consider they were entitled 
 to. He had accumulated ample evidence to prove that man 
 had been introduced into the earth at an earlier period than 
 geologists were then willing to believe. 
 
 One positive fact, it will be said, attested by so competent a 
 witness, ought to have outweighed any amount of negative 
 testimony, previously accumulated, respecting the non-occur 
 rence elsewhere of human remains in formations of the like 
 antiquity. In reply, I can only plead that a discovery which 
 seems to contradict the general tenor of previous investiga 
 tions is naturally received with much hesitation. To have un 
 dertaken in 1832, with a view of testing its truth, to follow the 
 Belgian philosopher through every stage of his observations 
 and proofs, would have been no easy task even for one well- 
 skilled in geology and osteology. To be let down, as Schmer- 
 ling was, day after day, by a rope tied to a tree, so as to slide 
 to the foot of the first opening of the Engis cave,* where the 
 
 * Sclimerling, part i. p. 30. 
 
CHAP. iv. PRESENT STATE OF BELGIAN CAYES. 69 
 
 best-preserved human skulls were found; and, after thus 
 gaining access to the first subterranean gallery, to creep on all 
 fours through a contracted passage leading to larger chambers, 
 there to superintend by torchlight, week after week and 
 year after year, the workmen who were breaking through 
 the stalagmitic crust as hard as marble, in order to remove 
 piece by piece the underlying bone-breccia nearly as hard ; 
 to stand for hours with one's feet in the mud, and with 
 water dripping from the roof on one's head, in order to mark 
 the position and guard against the loss of each single bone 
 of a skeleton ; and at length, after finding leisure, strength, 
 and courage for all these operations, to look forward, as the 
 fruits of one's labour, to the publication of unwelcome in 
 telligence, opposed to the prepossessions of the scientific 
 as well as. of the unscientific public; when these circum 
 stances are taken into account, we need scarcely wonder, not 
 only that a passing traveller failed to stop and scrutinise the 
 evidence, but that a quarter of a century should have elapsed 
 before even the neighbouring professors of the University 
 of Liege came forth to vindicate the truthfulness of their 
 indefatigable and clear-sighted countryman. 
 
 In 1860, when I revisited Liege, twenty-six years after my 
 interview with Schmerling, I found that several of the 
 caverns described by him had in the interval been annihilated. 
 Not a vestige, for example, of the caves of Engis, Chokier, 
 and Groffontaine remained. The calcareous stone, in the 
 heart of which the cavities once existed, had been quarried 
 away, and removed bodily for building and lime-making. 
 Fortunately, a great part of the Engihoul cavern, situated on 
 the right bank of the Meuse, was still in the same state as 
 when Schmerling delved into it in 1831, and drew from it 
 the bones of three human skeletons. I determined, there 
 fore, to examine it, and was so fortunate as to obtain the as 
 sistance of a zealous naturalist of Liege, Professor Malaise, 
 
70 PRESENT STATE OF BELGIAN CAVES. CHAP. iv. 
 
 who accompanied me to the cavern, where we engaged some 
 workmen to break through the crust of stalagmite, so that 
 we could search for bones in the undisturbed earth beneath. 
 Bones and teeth of the cave-bear were soon found, and 
 several other extinct quadrupeds which Schmerling has enu 
 merated. My companion, continuing the work perseveringly 
 for weeks after my departure, succeeded at length in ex 
 tracting from the same deposit, at the depth of two feet 
 below the crust of stalagmite, three fragments of a human 
 skull, and two perfect lower jaws with teeth, all associated in 
 such a manner with the bones of bears, large pachyderms, 
 and ruminants, and so precisely resembling these in colour 
 and state of preservation, as to leave no doubt in his mind 
 that man was contemporary with the extinct animals. Pro 
 fessor Malaise has given figures of the human remains in the 
 bulletin of the royal academy of Belgium for I860.* 
 
 The rock in which the Liege caverns occur belongs gene 
 rally to the carboniferous or mountain limestone, in some 
 few cases only to the older Devonian formation. Whenever 
 the work of destruction has not gone too far, magnificent 
 sections, sometimes 200 and 300 feet in height, are exposed 
 to view. They confirm Schmerling's doctrine, that most of 
 the materials, organic and inorganic, now filling the caverns, 
 have been washed into them through narrow vertical or 
 oblique fissures, the upper extremities of which are choked 
 up with soil and gravel, and would scarcely ever be discover 
 able at the surface, especially in so wooded a country. Among 
 the sections obtained by quarrying, one of the finest which I 
 saw was in the beautiful valley of Fond du Foret, above 
 Chaudefontaine, not far from the village of Magnee, where 
 one of the rents communicating with the surface has been 
 filled up to the brim with rounded and half-rounded stones, 
 
 * Tom. x. p. 546. 
 
CHAP. iv. STALACTITE IN CAVES. 71 
 
 angular pieces of limestone and shale, besides sand and mud, 
 together with bones, chiefly of the cave-bear. Connected with 
 this main duct, which is from one to two feet in width, are 
 several minor ones, each from one to three inches wide, also 
 extending to the upper country or table-land, and choked up 
 with similar materials. They are inclined at angles of 30 
 and 40, their walls being generally coated with stalactite, 
 pieces of which have here and there been broken off and 
 mingled with the contents of the rents, thus helping to 
 explain why we so often meet with detached pieces of that 
 substance in the mud and breccia of the Belgian caves. It is 
 not easy to conceive that a solid horizontal floor of hard 
 stalagmite should, after its formation, be broken up by run 
 ning water ; but when the walls of steep and tortuous rents, 
 serving as feeders to the principal fissures and to inferior 
 vaults and galleries are encrusted with stalagmite, some of 
 the incrustation may readily be torn up when heavy fragments 
 of rock are hurried by a flood through passages inclined at 
 angles of 30 or 40. 
 
 The decay and decomposition of the fossil bones seem to 
 have been arrested in most of the caves by a constant sup 
 ply of water charged with carbonate of lime, which dripped 
 from the roofs while the caves were becoming gradually filled 
 up. By similar agency the mud, sand, and pebbles were 
 usually consolidated. 
 
 The following explanation of this phenomenon has been 
 suggested by the eminent chemist Liebig. On the surface of 
 Franconia, where the limestone abounds in caverns, is a 
 fertile soil in which vegetable matter is continually decaying. 
 This mould or humus, being acted on by moisture and air, 
 evolves carbonic acid, which is dissolved by rain. The rain 
 water, thus impregnated, permeates the porous limestone, 
 dissolves a portion of it, and afterwards, when the excess of 
 carbonic acid evaporates in the caverns, parts with the 
 
72 ENGULFED RIVERS NEAR LI^GE. CHAP. iv. 
 
 calcareous matter and forms stalactite. So long as water 
 flows, even occasionally, through a suite of caverns, no layer 
 of pure stalagmite can be produced ; hence the formation of 
 such a layer, is generally an event posterior in date to the 
 cessation of the old system of drainage, an event which might 
 be brought about by an earthquake causing new fissures, or 
 by the river wearing its way down to a lower level, and 
 thenceforth running in a new channel. 
 
 In all the subterranean cavities, more than forty in num 
 ber, explored by Schmerling, he only observed one cave, 
 namely that of Chokier, where there were two regular layers 
 of stalagmite, divided by fossiliferous cave-mud. In this 
 instance, we may suppose that the stream, after flowing for 
 a long period at one level, cut its way down to an inferior 
 suite of caverns, and, flowing through them for centuries, 
 choked them up with debris ; after which it rose once more 
 to its original higher level : just as in the mountain limestone 
 district of Yorkshire some rivers, habitually absorbed by a 
 ( swallow hole,' are occasionally unable to discharge all their 
 water through it^; in which case they rise and rush through 
 a higher subterranean passage, which was at some former 
 period in the regular line of drainage, as is often attested 
 by the fluviatile gravel still contained in it. 
 
 There are now in the basin of the Meuse, not far from Liege, 
 several examples of engulfed brooks and rivers : some of 
 them, like that of St. Hadelin, east of Chaudefontaine, which 
 reappears after an underground course of a mile or two ; 
 others, like the Vesdre, which is lost near G-offontaine, and 
 after a time re-emerges ; some, again, like the torrent near 
 Magnee, which, after entering a cave, never again comes to 
 the day. In the season of floods such streams are turbid at 
 their entrance, but clear as a mountain-spring where they 
 issue again ; so that they must be slowly filling up cavities 
 in the interior with mud, sand, pebbles, snail-shells, and 
 
CHAP. iv. ANTIQUITY OF Llf GE CAVE-BONES. 73 
 
 the bones of animals which may be carried away during 
 floods. 
 
 The manner in which some of the large thigh and shank 
 bones of the rhinoceros and other pachyderms are rounded, 
 while some of the smaller bones of the same creatures, and 
 of the hysena, bear, and horse, are reduced to pebbles, shows 
 that they were often transported for some distance in the 
 channels of torrents, before they found a resting-place. 
 
 When we desire to reason or speculate on the probable 
 antiquity of human bones found fossil in such situations as 
 the caverns near Liege, there are two classes of evidence to 
 which we may appeal for our guidance. First, considerations 
 of the time required to allow of many species of carnivorous 
 and herbivorous animals, which flourished in the cave period, 
 becoming first scarce, and then so entirely extinct as we 
 have seen that they had become before the era of the Danish 
 peat and Swiss lake dwellings : secondly, the great number 
 of centuries necessary for the conversion of the physical 
 geography of the Liege district from its ancient to its present 
 configuration ; so many old underground channels, through 
 which brooks and rivers flowed in the cave period, being now 
 laid dry and choked up. 
 
 The great alterations which have taken place in the shape 
 of the valley of the Meuse and some of its tributaries 
 are often demonstrated by the abrupt manner in which the 
 mouths of fossiliferous caverns open in the face of perpen 
 dicular precipices 200 feet or more in height above the 
 present streams. There appears also, in many cases, to be 
 such a correspondence in the openings of caverns on opposite 
 sides of some of the valleys, both large and small, as to 
 incline one to suspect that they originally belonged to a 
 series of tunnels and galleries which were continuous before 
 the present system of drainage came into play, or before the 
 existing valleys were scooped out. Other signs of subsequent 
 
74 ANTIQUITY OF LIEGE C AYE-BONES. CHAP. iv. 
 
 fluctuations are afforded by gravel containing elephant's 
 bones at slight elevations above the Meuse and several of its 
 tributaries. The loess also, in the suburbs and neighbour 
 hood of Liege, occurring at various heights in patches lying 
 at between 20 and 200 feet above the river, cannot be 
 explained without supposing the filling up and re-excavation 
 of the valleys at a period posterior to the washing in of the 
 animal remains into most of the old caverns. It may be 
 objected that, according to the present rate of change, no 
 lapse of ages would suffice to bring about such revolutions 
 in physical geography as we are here contemplating. This 
 may be true. It is more than probable that the rate of 
 change was once far more active than it is now. Some of 
 the nearest volcanoes, namely, those of the Lower Eifel 
 about sixty miles to the eastward, seem to have been in 
 eruption in post-pliocene times, and may perhaps have been 
 connected and coeval with repeated risings or sinkings of the 
 land in the basin of the Meuse. It might be said, with 
 equal truth, that according to the present course of events, 
 no series of ages would suffice to reproduce such an assem-. 
 blage of cones and craters as those of the Eifel (near An- 
 dernach for example); and yet ^ome of them may be of 
 sufficiently modern date to belong to the era when man was 
 contemporary with the mammoth and rhinoceros in the 
 basin of the Meuse. 
 
 But, although we may be unable to estimate the minimum 
 of time required for the changes in physical geography above 
 alluded to, we cannot fail to perceive that the duration of 
 the period must have been very protracted, and that other ages 
 of comparative inaction may have followed, separating the 
 post-pliocene from the historical periods, and constituting 
 an interval no less indefinite in its duration. 
 
CHAP. T. NEANDERTHAL SKELETON. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 POST-PLIOCENE PERIOD FOSSIL HUMAN SKULLS OF THE 
 NEANDERTHAL AND ENGIS GATES. 
 
 HUMAN SKELETON FOUND IN CAVE NEAE DUSSELDORF ITS GEOLOGICAL 
 POSITION AND PROBABLE AGE ITS ABNORMAL AND APE-LIKE CHA 
 RACTERS FOSSIL HUMAN SKULL OF THE ENGIS CAVE NEAR LIEGE 
 
 PROFESSOB HUXLEY'S DESCRIPTION OF THESE SKULLS COMPARISON 
 OF EACH, WITH EXTREME VARIETIES OF THE NATIVE AUSTRALIAN 
 
 RACE RANGE OF CAPACITY IN THE HUMAN AND SIMIAN BRAINS 
 
 SKULL FROM BORREBY IN DENMARK CONCLUSIONS OF PROFESSOR 
 HUXLEY BEARING OF THE PECULIAR CHARACTERS OF THE NEAN 
 DERTHAL SKULL ON THE HYPOTHESIS OF TRANSMUTATION. 
 
 Fossil human Skeleton of the Neanderthal Cave near 
 Dusseldorf. 
 
 TJEFORE I speak more particularly of the opinions which 
 JLJ anatomists have expressed respecting the osteological 
 characters of the human skull from Engis, near Liege, 
 mentioned in the last chapter and described by Dr. Schmer- 
 ling, it will be desirable to say something of the geological 
 position of another skull, or rather skeleton, which, on 
 account of its peculiar conformation, has excited no small 
 sensation in the last few years. I allude to the skull found 
 in 1857, in a cave situated in that part of the valley of the 
 Diissel, near Dusseldorf, which is called the Neanderthal. 
 The spot is a deep and narrow ravine about seventy English 
 miles north-east of the region of the Liege caverns treated 
 of in the last chapter, and close to the village and railway 
 station of Hochdal between Dusseldorf and Elberfeld. The 
 cave occurs in the precipitous southern or left side of the 
 winding ravine, about sixty feet above the stream, and a 
 
76 GEOLOGICAL POSITION OF NEANDERTHAL SKELETON. CHAP. v. 
 
 hundred feet below the top of the cliff. The accompanying 
 section will give the reader an idea of its position. 
 
 Fig. 1 
 
 Section of the Neanderthal Cave near Diisseldorf. 
 
 a Cavern 60 feet above the Diissel, and 100 feet below the surface 
 
 of the country at c. 
 b Loam covering the floor of the cave near the bottom of which the 
 
 human skeleton was found. 
 
 b, c Kent connecting the cave with the upper surface of the country. 
 d Superficial sandy loam. 
 e Devonian limestone. 
 / Terrace, or ledge of rock. 
 
 When Dr. Fuhlrott of Elberfeld first examined the cave, 
 he found it to be high enough to allow a man to enter. 
 The width was seven or eight feet, and the length or depth 
 fifteen. I visited the spot in 1860, in company with Dr. 
 Fuhlrott, who had the kindness to come expressly from 
 Elberfeld to be my guide, and who brought with him the 
 original fossil skull, and a cast of the same, which he pre 
 sented to me. In the interval of three years, between 1857 
 and 1860, the ledge of rock, /, on which the cave opened, 
 and which was originally twenty feet wide, had been almost 
 entirely quarried away, and, at the rate at which the work 
 of dilapidation was proceeding, its complete destruction 
 seemed near at hand. 
 
 In the limestone are many fissures, one of which, still 
 partially filled with mud and stones, is represented in the 
 section at a c as continuous from the cave to the upper 
 
CHAP. v. NEANDERTHAL SKELETON. 77 
 
 surface of the country. Through this passage the loam, 
 and possibly the human body to which the bones belonged, 
 may have been washed into the cave below. The loam, 
 which covered the uneven bottom of the cave, was sparingly 
 mixed with rounded fragments of chert, and was very similar 
 in composition to that covering the general surface of that 
 region. 
 
 There was no crust of stalagmite overlying the mud in 
 which the human skeleton was found, and no bones of other 
 animals in the mud with the skeleton ; but just before our 
 visit in 1860 the tusk of a bear had been met with in some 
 mud in a lateral embranchment of the cave, in a situation 
 precisely similar to 6, fig. 1, and on a level corresponding 
 with that of the human skeleton. This tusk, shown us by 
 the proprietor of the cave, was two and a half inches long and 
 quite perfect ; but whether it was referable to a recent or 
 extinct species of bear, I could not determine. 
 
 From a printed letter of Dr. Fuhlrott we learn that on 
 removing the loam, which was five feet thick, from the cave, 
 the human skull was first noticed near the entrance, and, 
 further in, the other bones lying in the same horizontal 
 plane. It is supposed that the skeleton was complete, but 
 the workmen, ignorant of its value, scattered and lost most 
 of the bones, preserving only the larger ones.* 
 
 The cranium, which Dr. Fuhlrott showed me, was covered 
 both on its outer and inner surface, and especially on the 
 latter, with a profusion of dendritical crystallisations, and 
 some other bones of the skeleton were ornamented in the 
 same way. These markings, as Dr. Hermann von Meyer 
 observes, afford no sure criterion of antiquity, for they have 
 been observed on Eoman bones. Nevertheless, they are 
 more common in bones that have been long embedded in 
 
 * Letter to Professor Schaaffhausen, cited Natural History Keview, No. 2, 
 p. 156. 
 
78 NEANDERTHAL SKULL. CHAP. v. 
 
 the earth. The skull and bones, moreover, of the Neander 
 thal skeleton had lost so much of their animal matter as 
 to adhere strongly to the tongue, agreeing in this respect 
 with the ordinary condition of fossil remains of the post- 
 pliocene period. On the whole, I think it probable that this 
 fossil may be of about the same age as those found by 
 Schmerling in the Liege 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. 
 
 When the skull and other parts of the skeleton were 
 first exhibited at a German scientific meeting at Bonn, in 
 1857, some doubts were expressed by several naturalists, 
 whether it was truly human. Professor Schaaffhausen, 
 who, with the other experienced zoologists, did not share 
 these doubts, observed that the cranium, which included 
 the frontal bone, both parietals, part of the squamous, and 
 the upper third of the occipital, was of unusual size and 
 thickness, the forehead narrow and very low, and the pro 
 jection of the supra-orbital ridges enormously great. He 
 also stated that the absolute and relative length of the thigh 
 bone, humerus, radius, and ulna, agreed well with the di 
 mensions of a European individual of like stature at the 
 present day ; but that the thickness of the bones was very 
 extraordinary, and the elevation and depression for the at 
 tachment of muscles were developed in an unusual degree. 
 Some of the ribs, also, were of a singularly rounded shape 
 and abrupt curvature, which was supposed to indicate great 
 power in the thoracic muscles.* 
 
 In the same memoir, the Prussian anatomist remarks that 
 the depression of the forehead, see fig. 3, p. 82, is not due 
 to any artificial flattening, such as is practised in various 
 
 * Professor Schaaffhausen' s Memoir, translated, Natural History Eeview, 
 No. 2, April 1861. 
 
CHAP. v. SKULL OF ENGIS, NEAR LIEGE. 79 
 
 modes by barbarous nations in the Old and New World, 
 the skull being quite symmetrical, and showing no indication 
 of counter-pressure at the occiput; whereas, according to 
 Morton, in the Flat-heads of the Columbift, the frontal and 
 parietal bones are always unsymmetrical.* On the whole, 
 Professor SchaafThausen concluded that the individual to 
 whom the Neanderthal skull belonged must have been dis 
 tinguished by small cerebral development, and uncommon 
 strength of corporeal frame. 
 
 When on my return to England I showed the cast of the 
 cranium to Professor Huxley, he remarked at once that it 
 was the most ape-like skull he had ever beheld. Mr. Busk, 
 after giving a translation of Professor Schaaff hausen's me 
 moir in the Natural History Review, f added some valuable 
 comments of his own on the characters in which this skull 
 approached that of the gorilla and chimpanzee. 
 
 Professor Huxley afterwards studied the cast with the 
 object of assisting me to give illustrations of it in this work, 
 and in doing so discovered what had not previously been 
 observed, that it was quite as abnormal in the shape of its 
 occipital as in that of its frontal or superciliary region. 
 Before citing his words on the subject, I will offer a few 
 remarks on the Engis skull which the same anatomist has 
 compared with that of the Neanderthal. 
 
 Fossil Skull of the Engis Cave near Liege. 
 
 Among six or seven human skeletons, portions of which 
 were collected by Dr. Schmerling from three or four caverns 
 near Liege, embedded in the same matrix with the remains of 
 the elephant, rhinoceros, bear, hyaena, and other extinct qua 
 drupeds, the most perfect skull, as I have before stated, p. 65, 
 was that of an adult individual found in the cavern of Engis. 
 
 * Natural History Eeview, No. 2, p. 160. t No. 2, 1861. 
 
80 SKULL OF ENGIS, NEAR Ll GE. CHAP. V. 
 
 This skull, Dr. Schmerling figured in his work, observing 
 that it was too imperfect to enable the anatomist to deter 
 mine the facial angle, but that one might infer, from the 
 narrowness of tbe frontal portion, that it belonged to an in 
 dividual of small intellectual development. He speculated 
 on its Ethiopian affinities, but not confidently, observing 
 truly that it would require many more specimens to enable 
 an anatomist to arrive at sound conclusions on such a point. 
 M. Greoffroy St. Hilaire and other osteologists, who examined 
 the specimen, denied that it resembled a negro's skull. When 
 I saw the original in the museum at Liege, I invited Dr. 
 Spring, one of the professors of the university, to whom we 
 are indebted for a valuable memoir on the human bones 
 found in the cavern of Chauvaux near Namur, to have a 
 cast made of this Engis skull. He not only had the kind 
 ness to comply with my request, but rendered a service to 
 the scientific world by adding to the original cranium 
 several detached fragments which Dr. Schmerling had ob 
 tained from Engis, and which were found to fit in exactly, 
 so that the cast represented at fig. 2 is more complete than 
 that given in the first plate of Schmerling's work. It exhibits 
 on the right side the position of the auditory foramen (see 
 fig. 6, p. 88), which was not included in Schmerling's figure. 
 Mr. Busk, when he saw this cast, remarked to me that, 
 although forehead was, as Schmerling had truly stated, some 
 what narrow, it might nevertheless be matched by the skulls 
 of individuals of European race, an observation since fully 
 borne out by measurements, as will be seen in the sequel. 
 
 OBSERVATIONS BY PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON THE HUMAN SKULLS 
 OF ENGIS AND THE NEANDERTHAL. 
 
 ' The Engis skull, as originally figured by Professor Schmerling, 
 was in a very imperfect state ; but other fragments have since been 
 added to it by the care of Dr. Spring, and the cast upon which my 
 
CHAP. V. 
 
 SKULL OF EflGIS, NEAR LI^GE. 
 
 81 
 
 observations are based (fig. 2) exhibits the frontal, parietal, and 
 occipital regions, as far as the middle of the occipital foramen, with 
 the squamous and mastoid portions of the right temporal bone 
 entire, or nearly so, while the left temporal bone is wanting. From 
 the middle of the occipital foramen to the middle of the roof of each 
 orbit, the base of the skull is destroyed, and the facial bones are 
 entirely absent. 
 
 Fig. 2 
 i 
 
 Side view of the cast of part of a human skull found by Dr. Schmerling 
 embedded amongst the remains of extinct mammalia in the cave of Engis, near 
 Liege. 
 
 a Superciliary ridge and glabella. 
 b Coronal suture. 
 
 c The apex of the lambdoidal suture. 
 d The occipital protuberance. 
 
 ' The extreme length of the skull is 7'7 inches, and as its extreme 
 breadth is not more than 5' 25, its form is decidedly dolichocephalic. 
 At the same time its height (4| inches from the plane of the 
 glabello-occipital line (a d) to the vertex) is good, and the forehead 
 is well arched ; so that while the horizontal circumference of the 
 skull is about 20^- inches, the longitudinal arc from the nasal spine of 
 
 G 
 
82 
 
 NEANDERTHAL SKULL. 
 
 CHAP. V. 
 
 the frontal bone to the occipital protuberance (d~] measures about 13| 
 inches. The transverse arc from one auditory foramen to the other 
 across the middle of the sagittal suture measures about 13 inches. 
 The sagittal suture (b c) is 5-J inches in length. The superciliary 
 prominences are well, but not excessively, developed, and are sepa 
 rated by a median depression in the region of the glabella. They 
 indicate large frontal sinuses. If a line joining the glabella and 
 the occipital protuberance (a d) be made horizontal, no part of the 
 occiput projects more than y^th of an inch behind the posterior ex 
 tremity of that line ; and the upper edge of the auditory foramen 
 is almost in contact with the same line, or rather with one drawn 
 parallel to it on the outer surface of the skull. 
 
 Fig. 3 
 
 Side view of the cast of a part of a human skull from a cave in the Neanderthal 
 near Diisseldorf. 
 
 a The superciliary ridge and glabella. 
 b The coronal suture. 
 
 c The apex of the lambdoidal suture. 
 d The occipital protuberance. 
 
 ' The Neanderthal skull, with which also I am acquainted only by 
 means of Professor Schaaffhausen's drawings of an excellent cast and 
 of photographs, is so extremely different in appearance from the Engis 
 cranium, that it might well be supposed to belong to a distinct race 
 of mankind. It is 8 inches in extreme length and 5*75 inches in 
 
CHAP. V. 
 
 NEANDERTHAL SKULL. 
 
 83 
 
 extreme breadth, but only measures 3 '4 inches from the glabello- 
 occipital line to the vertex. The longitudinal arc, measured as 
 above, is 12 inches; the transverse arc cannot be exactly ascer 
 tained, in consequence of the absence of the temporal bones, but 
 was probably about the same, and certainly exceeded 10| inches. 
 The horizontal circumference is 23 inches. This great circum 
 ference arises largely from the vast development of the super 
 ciliary ridges, which are occupied by great frontal sinuses whose 
 inferior apertures are displayed exceedingly well in one of Dr. 
 
 Fig. 4 
 
 Outline of the skull of an adult Chimpanzee, of that from the Neanderthal, 
 and of that of a European, drawn to the same absolute size, in order better to 
 exhibit their relative differences. The superciliary region of the Neanderthal 
 skull appears less prominent than in fig. 3, as the contours are all taken along 
 the middle line where the superciliary projection of the Neanderthal skull is 
 least marked, 
 
 a The glabella. 
 
 b The occipital protuberance, or the point on the exterior of each skull 
 which corresponds roughly with the attachment of the tentorium, 
 or with the inferior boundary of the posterior cerebral lobes. 
 
 Fuhlrott's photographs, and form a continuous transverse prominence, 
 somewhat excavated in the middle line, across the lower part of the 
 brows. In consequence of this structure, the forehead appears still 
 lower and more retreating than it really is. To an anatomical eye 
 the posterior part of the skull is even more striking than the an 
 terior. The occipital protuberance occupies the extreme posterior 
 end of the skull when the glabello-occipital line is made horizontal, 
 
 G 2 
 
84 NEANDERTHAL SKULL. CHAP. v. 
 
 and so far from any part of the occipital region extending beyond 
 it, this region of the skull slopes obliquely upward and forward, so 
 that the lambdoidal suture is situated well upon the upper surface 
 of the cranium. At the same time, notwithstanding the great length 
 of the skull, the sagittal suture is remarkably short (41 inches), and 
 the squamosal suture is very straight. 
 
 * In human skulls, the superior curved ridge of the occipital bone 
 and the occipital protuberance correspond, approximative^, with 
 the level of the tentorium and with the lateral sinuses, and con 
 sequently with the inferior limit of the posterior lobes of the brain. 
 At first, I found some difficulty in believing that a human brain 
 could have its posterior lobes so flattened and diminished as must 
 have been the case in the Neanderthal man, supposing the ordi 
 nary relation to obtain between the superior occipital ridges and the 
 tentorium; but on my application, through Sir Charles Lyell, 
 Dr. Fuhlrott, the possessor of the skull, was good enough not only to 
 ascertain the existence of the lateral sinuses in their ordinary posi 
 tion, but to send convincing proofs of the fact, in excellent photo 
 graphic views of the interior of the skull, exhibiting clear indications 
 of these sinuses. 
 
 ' There can be no doubt that, as Professor Schaaffhausen and 
 Mr. Busk have stated, this skull is the most brutal of all known 
 human skulls, resembling those of the apes not only in the prodigious 
 development of the superciliary prominences and the forward ex 
 tension of the orbits, but still more in the depressed form of the 
 brain-case, in the straightness of the squamosal suture, and in 
 the complete retreat of the occiput forward and upward, from the 
 superior occipital ridges. 
 
 ' But the cranium, in its present condition, is stated by Professor 
 Schaaffhausen to contain 1033'24 cubic centimeters of water, or, in 
 other words, about 63 English cubic inches. As the entire skull could 
 hardly have held less than 12 cubic inches more, its minimum 
 capacity may be estimated at 75 cubic inches. The most capacious 
 healthy European skull yet measured had a capacity of 114 cubic 
 inches, the smallest (as estimated by weight of brain) about 55 
 cubic inches, while, according to Professor Schaaffhausen, some 
 Hindoo skulls have as small a capacity as about 46 cubic inches 
 (27 oz. of water). The largest cranium of any Gorilla yet measured 
 contained 34' 5 cubic inches. The Neanderthal cranium stands, 
 therefore, in capacity, very nearly on a level with the mean of the 
 two human extremes, and very far above the pithecoid maximum. 
 
 ( Hence, even in the absence of the bones of the arm and thigh, 
 
CHAP. v. BORREBY SKULL. 85 
 
 which, according to Professor Schaaffhausen, had the precise propor 
 tions found in man, although they were much stouter than ordinary- 
 human bones, there could be no reason for ascribing this cranium 
 to anything but a man ; while the strength and development of the 
 muscular ridges of the limb-bones are characters in perfect accord 
 ance with those exhibited, in a minor degree, by the bones of such 
 hardy savages, exposed to a rigorous climate, as the Patagonians. 
 
 1 The Neanderthal cranium has certainly not undergone compression, 
 and, in reply to the suggestion that the skull is that of an idiot, it 
 may be urged that the onus probandi lies with those who adopt the 
 hypothesis. Idiotcy is compatible with very various forms and ca 
 pacities of the cranium, but I know of none which present the least 
 resemblance to the Neanderthal skull ; and, furthermore, I shall pro 
 ceed to show that the latter manifests but an extreme degree of a 
 stage of degradation exhibited, as a natural condition, by the crania 
 of certain races of mankind. 
 
 * Mr. Busk drew my attention, some time ago, to the resemblance 
 between some of the skulls taken from tumuli of the stone period at 
 Borreby in Denmark, of which Mr. Busk possesses numerous accurate 
 figures, and the Neanderthal cranium. One of the Borreby skulls 
 in particular (fig. 5, p. 86) has remarkably projecting superciliary 
 ridges, a retreating forehead, a low flattened vertex, and an occiput 
 which shelves upward and forward. But the skull is relatively higher 
 and broader, or more brachycephalic, the sagittal suture longer, 
 and the superciliary ridges less projecting, than in the Neanderthal 
 skull. Nevertheless, there is, without doubt, much resemblance in 
 character between the two skulls, a circumstance which is the 
 more interesting, since the other Borreby skulls have better fore 
 heads and less prominent superciliary ridges, and exhibit altogether 
 a higher conformation. 
 
 ; The Borreby skulls belong to the stone period of Denmark, and 
 the people to whom they appertained were probably either contem 
 poraneous with, or later than, the makers of the " refuse-heaps " of 
 that country. In other words, they were subsequent to the last great 
 physical changes of Europe, and were contemporaries of the urus 
 and bison, not of the Elephas primigenius, Rhinoceros tichorhinus, and 
 Hyaena spelcea. 
 
 ' Supposing for a moment, what is not proven, that the Neanderthal 
 skull belonged to a race allied to the Borreby people and was as 
 modern as they, it would be separated by as great a distance of time 
 as of anatomical character from the Engis skull, and the possibility of 
 its belonging to a distinct race from the latter might reasonably 
 appear to be greatly heightened. 
 
80 
 
 BORREBY SKULL. 
 
 CHAP. V. 
 
 ' To prevent the possibility of reasoning in a vicious circle, how 
 ever, I thought it would be well to endeavour to ascertain what 
 amount of cranial variation is to be found in a pure race at the present 
 
 Fig. 5 
 
 Skull associated with ground flint implements, from a tumulus at Borreby in 
 Denmark, after a camera lucida drawing by Mr. Gr. Busk, F.K.S. The thick 
 dark line indicates so much of the skull as corresponds with the fragment from 
 the Neanderthal. 
 
 a Superciliary ridge, c The apex of the lambdoidal suture. 
 
 b Coronal suture. d The occipital protuberance. 
 
 e The auditory foramen. 
 
CHAP. v. ENGIS AND AUSTRALIAN SKULLS COMPARED. 
 
 87 
 
 day ; and as the natives of Southern and Western Australia are 
 probably as pure and homogeneous in blood, customs, and language, 
 as any race of savages in existence, I turned to them, the more 
 readily as the Hunterian museum contains a very fine collection of 
 such skulls. 
 
 ' I soon found it possible to select from among these crania two (con 
 nected by all sorts of intermediate gradations), the one of which should 
 very nearly resemble the Engis skull, while the other should some 
 what less closely approximate the Neanderthal cranium in form, size, 
 and proportions. And at the same time others of these skulls pre 
 sented no less remarkable affinities with the low type of Borreby 
 skull. 
 
 ' That the resemblances to which I allude are by no means of a 
 merely superficial character, is shown by the accompanying diagram 
 (fig. 6, p. 88), which gives the contours of the two ancient and of 
 one of the Australian skulls, and by the following table of measure 
 ments. 
 
 
 A 
 
 B 
 
 C 
 
 D 
 
 E 
 
 F 
 
 Engis 
 
 20 
 
 13f 
 
 12 
 
 43 
 
 7f 
 
 5 ? 
 
 Australian, No. 1 
 
 201 
 
 13 
 
 12 
 
 4- 
 
 71 
 
 5 
 
 Australian, No. 2 
 
 22 
 
 12 
 
 10f 
 
 3 
 
 7-9 
 
 5| 
 
 Neanderthal 
 
 23 
 
 12 
 
 10 
 
 3f 
 
 8 
 
 ^4 
 
 A The horizontal circumference in the plane of a line joining the glabella, 
 with the occipital protuberance. 
 
 B The longitudinal arc from the nasal depression along the middle line of 
 the skull to the occipital tuberosity. 
 
 c From the level of the glabello-occipital line on each side, across the 
 middle of the sagittal suture to the same point on the opposite side. 
 
 D The vertical height from the glabello-occipital line. 
 
 E The extreme longitudinal measurement. 
 
 F The extreme transverse measurement.* 
 
 ' The question whether the Engis skull has rather the character of 
 one of the high races or of one of the lower has been much disputed, 
 but the following measurements of an English skull, noted in the cata 
 logue of the Hunterian museum as typically Caucasian (see fig. 4) 
 will serve to show that both sides may be right, and that cranial 
 measurements alone afford no safe indication of race. 
 
 * I have taken the glabello-occipital 
 line as a base in these measurements, 
 simply because it enables me to com 
 pare all the skulls, whether fragments 
 or entire, together. The greatest cir 
 
 cumference of the English skull lies 
 in a plane considerably above that of 
 the glabello-occipital line, and amounts 
 to twenty-two inches. 
 
83 
 
 ENGIS AND NEANDERTHAL SKULLS. 
 
 CHAP. v. 
 
 English . 
 
 A 
 
 21 
 
 B 
 13} 
 
 C 
 
 12* 
 
 7 
 
 * In making the preceding statement, it must be clearly understood 
 that I neither desire to affirm that the Engis and Neanderthal skulls 
 belong to the Australian race, nor to assert even that the ancient 
 
 Fig. 6 
 
 Outlines of the skull from the Neanderthal, of an Australian skull from Port 
 Adelaide, and of the skull from the Cave of Engis, drawn to the same absolute 
 length, in order the better to contrast their proportions. 
 
 a b As in figure 4, p. 80. 
 e The position of the auditory foramen of the Engis skull. 
 
 skulls belong to one and the same race, so far as race is measured by 
 language, colour of skin, or character of hair. Against the con 
 clusion that they are of the same race as the Australians various 
 minor anatomical differences of the ancient skulls, such as the great 
 development of the frontal sinuses, might be urged ; while against 
 the supposition of either the identity, or the diversity, of race of the 
 two arises the known independence of the variation of cranium on 
 the one hand, and of hair, colour, and language on the other. 
 
 ' But the amount of variation of the Borreby skulls, and the fact 
 that the skulls of one of the purest and most homogeneous of existing 
 races of men can be proved to differ from one another in the same 
 characters, though perhaps not quite to the same extent, as the Engis 
 
CHAP. v. COMPARISON OF HUMAN AND SIMIAN SKULLS. 89 
 
 and Neanderthal skulls, seem to me to prohibit any cautious reasoner 
 from affirming the latter to have been necessarily of distinct races. 
 
 ' The marked resemblances between the ancient skulls and their 
 modern Australian analogues, however, have a profound interest, 
 when it is recollected that the stone axe is as much the weapon and 
 the implement of the modern as of the ancient savage; that the 
 former turns the bones of the kangaroo and of the emu to the same 
 account as the latter did the bones of the deer and the urus ; that 
 the Australian heaps up the shells of devoured shellfish in mounds 
 which represent the " refuse-heaps" or " Kjokkenmb'ddings," of Den 
 mark ; and, finally, that, on the other side of Torres Straits, a race 
 akin to the Australians are among the few people who now build 
 their houses on pile-works, like those of the ancient Swiss lakes. 
 
 ' That this amount of resemblance in habit and in the conditions of 
 existence is accompanied by as close a resemblance in cranial con 
 figuration, illustrates on a great scale that what Ciivier demonstrated 
 of the animals of the Nile valley is no less true of men ; circum 
 stances remaining similar, the savage varies little more, it would 
 seem, than the ibis or the crocodile, especially if we take into ac 
 count the enormous extent of the time over which our knowledge of 
 man now extends, as compared with that measured by the duration 
 of the sepulchres of Egypt. 
 
 k Finally, the comparatively large cranial capacity of the Neander 
 thal skull, overlaid though it may be by pithecoid bony walls, and 
 the completely human proportions of the accompanying limb-bones, 
 together with the very fair development of the Engis skull, clearly 
 indicate that the first traces of the primordial stock whence man has 
 proceeded need no longer be sought, by those who entertain any form 
 of the doctrine of progressive development, in the newest tertiaries ; 
 but that they may be looked for in an epoch more distant from the 
 age of the Elephas primigenius than that is from us.' 
 
 The two skulls which form the subject of the preceding 
 comments and illustrations have given rise to nearly an 
 equal amount of surprise for opposite reasons ; that of Engis 
 because being so unequivocally ancient, it approached so 
 near to the highest or Caucasian type ; that of the Neander 
 thal, because, having no such decided claims to antiquity, it 
 departs so widely from the normal standard of humanity. 
 
90 COMPARISON OF THE CHAP. v. 
 
 Professor Huxley's observation regarding the wide range of 
 variation, both as to shape and capacity, in the skulls of so 
 pure a race as the native Australian, removes to no small 
 extent this supposed anomaly, assuming what though not 
 proved is very probable, that both varieties coexisted in the 
 post-pliocene period in Western Europe. 
 
 As to the Engis skull, we must remember that although 
 associated with the elephant, rhinoceros, bear, tiger, and 
 hyaena, all of extinct species, it nevertheless is also accom 
 panied by a bear, stag, wolf, fox, beaver, and many other 
 quadrupeds of species still living. Indeed many eminent 
 palaeontologists, and among them Professor Pictet, think that, 
 numerically considered, the larger portion of the mammalian 
 fauna agrees specifically with that of our own period, so that 
 we are scarcely entitled to feel surprised if we find human 
 races of the post-pliocene epoch undistinguishable from some 
 living ones. It would merely tend to show that man has 
 been as constant in his osteological characters as many other 
 mammalia now his contemporaries. The expectation of 
 always meeting with a lower type of human skull, the older 
 the formation in which it occurs, is based on the theory of 
 progressive development, and it may prove to be sound ; 
 nevertheless we must remember that as yet we have no dis 
 tinct geological evidence that the appearance of what are 
 called the inferior races of mankind has always preceded in 
 chronological order that of the higher races. 
 
 It is now admitted that the differences between the brain 
 of the highest races of man and that of the lowest, though 
 less in degree, are of the same order as those which separate 
 the human from the simian brain;* and the same rule 
 holds good in regard to the shape of the skull. The average 
 Negro skull differs from that of the European in having a 
 
 * Natural History Keview, 1861, p. 8. 
 
CHAP. v. HUMAN AND SIMIAN BRAINS. 91 
 
 more receding forehead, more prominent superciliary ridges, 
 and more largely developed prominences and furrows for 
 the attachment of muscles ; the face also, and its lines, are 
 larger proportionally. The brain is somewhat less voluminous 
 on the average in the lower races of mankind, its convolu 
 tions rather less complicated, and those of the two hemi 
 spheres more symmetrical, in all which points an approach 
 is made to the simian type. It will also be seen, by reference 
 to the late Dr. Morton's works, and by the foregoing state 
 ments of Professor Huxley, that the range of capacity between 
 the highest and lowest human brain is far greater than that 
 between the highest simian and lowest human brain; but 
 the Neanderthal skull, although in several respects it is more 
 ape-like than any human skull previously discovered, is, in 
 regard to capacity, by no means contemptible. 
 
 Eminent anatomists have shown that in the average pro 
 portions of some of the bones the Negro differs from the 
 European, and that in most of these characters, he makes a 
 slightly nearer approach to the anthropoid quadrumana;* 
 but Professor Schaaffhausen has pointed out that in these 
 
 * ' The inferior races of mankind relatively, a little longer ; the foot is 
 exhibit proportions which are in many an eighth, and the hand a twelfth 
 respects intermediate between the longer than in the European. It is 
 higher, or European, orders, and the well known that the foot is less well 
 monkeys. In the Negro, for instance, formed in the Negro than in the 
 the stature is less than in the Euro- European. The arch of the instep, 
 pean. The cranium, as is well known, the perfect conformation of which is 
 bears a small proportion to the face. essential to steadiness and ease of 
 Of the extremities the upper are pro- gait, is less elevated in the former 
 portionately longer, and there is, in than in the latter. The foot is 
 both upper and lower, a less marked thereby rendered flatter as well as 
 preponderance of the proximal over the longer, more nearly resembling the 
 distal segments. For instance, in the monkey's, between which and the 
 Negro, the thigh and arm are rather European, there is a marked differ- 
 shorter than in the European ; the leg ence in this particular.' From ' A 
 is actually of equal length in both Treatise on the Human Skeleton' by 
 races, and is therefore, relatively, a Dr. Humphry, Lecturer on Surgery 
 little longer in the Negro ; the fore-arm and Anatomy in the Cambridge Uni- 
 in the latter is actually, as well as versity Medical School, p. 91 
 
92 COMPAEISON OF THE HUMAN AND SIMIAN BRAINS. CHAP. v. 
 
 proportions the Neanderthal skeleton does not differ from 
 the ordinary standard, so that the skeleton by no means 
 indicates a transition between Homo and Pithecus. 
 
 There is doubtless, as shown in the diagram fig. 4, a 
 nearer resemblance in the outline of the Neanderthal skull 
 to that of a chimpanzee than had ever been observed before 
 in any human cranium ; and Professor Huxley's description 
 of the occipital region shows that the resemblance is not 
 confined to the mere excessive prominence of the superciliary 
 ridges. 
 
 The direct bearing of the ape-like character of the Nean 
 derthal skull on Lamarck's doctrine of progressive develop 
 ment and transmutation, or on that modification of it which 
 has of late been so ably advocated by Mr. Darwin, consists 
 in this, that the newly observed deviation from a normal 
 standard of human structure is not in a casual or random 
 direction, but just what might have been anticipated if the 
 laws of variation were such as the transmutationists require. 
 For if we conceive the cranium to be very ancient, it exem 
 plifies a less advanced stage of progressive development 
 and improvement. If it be a comparatively modern race, 
 owing its peculiarities of conformation to degeneracy, it is 
 an illustration of what the botanists have called ' atavism,' 
 or the tendency of varieties to revert to an ancestral type, 
 which type, in proportion to its antiquity, would be of lower 
 grade. To this hypothesis, of a genealogical connection 
 between man and the lower animals, I shall again allude 
 in the concluding chapters. 
 
CHAP. VI. POST-PLIOCENE ALLUVIUM. 93 
 
 CHAPTEK VI. 
 
 POST-PLIOCENE ALLUYIUM AND CAYE DEPOSITS WITH 
 FLINT IMPLEMENTS. 
 
 GENERAL POSITION OF DRIFT WITH EXTINCT MAMMALIA IN VALLEYS 
 
 DISCOVERIES OF M. BOUCHER DE PERTHES AT ABBEVILLE FLINT 
 
 IMPLEMENTS FOUND ALSO AT ST. ACHEUL, NEAR AMIENS CURIOSITY 
 
 AWAKENED BY THE SYSTEMATIC EXPLORATION OF THE BRIXHAM CAVE 
 FLINT KNIVES IN SAME, WITH BONES OF EXTINCT MAMMALIA SUPER 
 POSITION OF DEPOSITS IN THE CAVE VISITS OF ENGLISH AND FRENCH 
 
 GEOLOGISTS TO ABBEVILLE AND AMIENS. 
 
 Post-pliocene Alluvium containing Flint Implements in 
 the Valley of the Somme. 
 
 mHRpUGrHOUT a large part of Europe we find at mode- 
 -L rate elevations above the present river-channels, usually 
 at a height of less than forty feet but sometimes much 
 higher, beds of gravel, sand, and loam containing bones of 
 the elephant, rhinoceros, horse, ox, and other quadrupeds, 
 some of extinct, others of living, species, belonging for the 
 most part to the fauna already alluded to in the last chapter 
 as characteristic of the interior of caverns. The greater part 
 of these deposits contain fluviatile shells, and have un 
 doubtedly been accumulated in ancient river-beds. These 
 old channels have long since been dry, the streams which 
 once flowed in them having shifted their position, deepening 
 the valleys, and often widening them on one side. 
 
 It has naturally been asked, if man coexisted with the 
 extinct species of the caves, why were his remains and the 
 works of his hands never embedded outside the caves in 
 ancient river-gravel containing the same fossil fauna ? Why 
 should it be necessary for the geologist to resort for evidence 
 
94 POST-PLIOCENE ALLUVIUM OF THE SOMME. CHAP. vi. 
 
 of the antiquity of our race to the dark recesses of under 
 ground vaults and tunnels, which may have served as places 
 of refuge or sepulture to a succession of human beings and 
 wild animals, and where floods may have confounded to 
 gether in one breccia the memorials of the fauna of more 
 than one epoch ? Why do we not meet with a similar as 
 semblage of the relics of man, and of living and extinct 
 quadrupeds, in places where the strata can be thoroughly 
 scrutinised in the light of day ? 
 
 Recent researches have at length demonstrated that such 
 memorials, so long sought for in vain, do in fact exist, and 
 their recognition is the chief cause of the more favourable 
 reception now given to the conclusions which MM. Tournal, 
 Christol, Schmerling, and others, arrived at thirty years ago 
 respecting the fossil contents of caverns. 
 
 The first great step in this new direction was made 
 thirteen years after the publication of Schmerling's ( Re 
 searches,' by M. Boucher de Perthes, who found in ancient 
 alluvium at Abbeville, in Picardy, some flint implements, 
 the relative antiquity of which was attested by their geologi 
 cal position. The antiquarian knowledge of their discoverer 
 enabled him to recognise in their rude and peculiar type a 
 character distinct from that of the polished stone weapons 
 of a later period, usually called * celts.' In the first 
 volume of his f Antiquites Celtiques,' published in 1847, 
 M. Boucher de Perthes styled these older tools ( antedilu 
 vian,' because they came from the lowest beds of a series of 
 ancient alluvial strata bordering the valley of the Somme, 
 which geologists had termed ' diluvium.' He had begun to 
 collect these implements in 1841, from which time they had 
 been dug out of the drift or deposits of gravel and sand 
 whenever excavations were made in repairing the fortifica 
 tions of Abbeville ; or annually, as often as flints were wanted 
 for the roads, or loam for making bricks. Fine sections, 
 
CHAP. vi. DISCOVERIES OF M. BOUCHER DE PERTHES. 95 
 
 therefore, were laid open, from twenty to thirty-five feet in 
 depth, and the bones of quadrupeds of the genera elephant, 
 rhinoceros, bear, hysena, stag, ox, horse, and others, were 
 found, and had been sent from time to time to Paris to be 
 examined and named by Cuvier, who described them in his 
 ' Ossements Fossiles.' A correct account of the associated 
 flint tools and of their position was given in 1847 by 
 M. Boucher de Perthes in his work above cited, and they 
 were stated to occur at various depths, often twenty or thirty 
 feet from the surface, in sand and gravel, especially in those 
 strata which were nearly in contact with the subjacent white 
 chalk. But the scientific world had no faith in the state 
 ment that works of art, however rude, had been met with in 
 undisturbed beds of such antiquity. Few geologists visited 
 Abbeville in winter, when the sand-pits were open, and when 
 they might have opportunities of verifying the sections, and 
 judging whether the instruments had really been embedded 
 by natural causes in the same strata with the bones of the 
 mammoth, rhinoceros, and other extinct mammalia. Some 
 of the tools figured in the e Antiquites Celtiques ' were so 
 rudely shaped, that many imagined them to have owed their 
 peculiar forms to accidental fracture in a river's bed ; others 
 suspected frauds on the part of the workmen, who might 
 have fabricated them for sale, or that the gravel had been 
 disturbed, and that the worked flints had got mingled with 
 the bones of the mammoth long after that animal and its 
 associates had disappeared from the earth. 
 
 No one was more sceptical than the late eminent physician 
 of Amiens, Dr. Eigollot, who had long before (in the year 
 1819) written a memoir on the fossil mammalia of the valley 
 of the Somme. He was at length induced to visit Abbe 
 ville, and, having inspected the collection of M. Boucher de 
 Perthes, returned home resolved to look for himself for flint 
 tools in the gravel-pits near Amiens. There, accordingly, at 
 
90 EXPLORATIONS OF THE BRIXHAM CAVE. CHAP. vi. 
 
 a distance of about forty miles from Abbeville, he imme 
 diately found abundance of similar flint implements, precisely 
 the same in the rudeness of their make, and the same in their 
 geological position ; some of them in gravel nearly on a level 
 with the Somme, others in similar deposits resting on chalk at 
 a height of about ninety feet above the river. 
 
 Dr. Eigollot having in the course of four years obtained 
 several hundred specimens of these tools, most of them from 
 St. Acheul in the south-east suburbs of Amiens, lost no 
 time in communicating an account of them to the scientific 
 world, in a memoir illustrated by good figures of the worked 
 flints and careful sections of the beds. These sections were 
 executed by M. Buteux, an engineer well qualified for the 
 task, who had written a good description of the geology of Pi- 
 cardy. Dr. Eigollot, in this memoir, pointed out most clearly 
 that it was not in the vegetable soil, nor in the brick-earth with 
 land and fresh- water shells next below, but in the lower beds 
 of coarse flint-gravel, usually twelve, twenty, or twenty-five 
 feet below the surface, that the implements were met with, just 
 as they had been previously stated by M. Boucher de Perthes 
 to occur at Abbeville. The conclusion, therefore, which was 
 legitimately deduced from all the facts, was that the flint 
 tools and their fabricators were coeval with the extinct mam 
 malia embedded in the same strata. 
 
 Brixham Cave, near Torquay, Devonshire. 
 
 Four years after the appearance of Dr. Eigollot's paper, a 
 sudden change of opinion was brought about in England 
 respecting the probable coexistence, at a former period, of 
 man and many extinct mammalia, in consequence of the 
 results obtained from a careful exploration of a cave at 
 Brixham, near Torquay, in Devonshire. As the new views 
 very generally adopted by English geologists had no small 
 
HAP. vi. EXPLORATIONS OF THE BRIXHAM CAVE. 97 
 
 influence on the subsequent progress of opinion in France, 
 I shall interrupt my account of the researches made in 
 the Valley of the Somme, by a brief notice of those which 
 were carried on in 1858 in Devonshire with more than 
 usual care and scientific method. Dr. Buckland, in his 
 celebrated work, entitled ( KeliquiaB Diluvianse,' published 
 in 1823, in which he treated of the organic remains con 
 tained in caves, fissures, and ' diluvial gravel ' in England, 
 had given a clear statement of the results of his own original 
 observations, and had declared that none of the human bones 
 or stone implements met with by him in any of the caverns 
 could be considered to be as old as the mammoth and other 
 extinct quadrupeds. Opinions in harmony with this con 
 clusion continued until very lately to be generally in vogue 
 in England ; although about the time that Schmerling was 
 exploring the Liege caves, the Eev. Mr. M'Enery, a Eoman 
 Catholic priest, residing near Torquay, had found in a cave 
 one mile east of that town, called ' Kent's Hole,' in red loam 
 covered with stalagmite, not only bones of the mammoth, 
 tichorhine rhinoceros, cave-bear, and other mammalia, but 
 several remarkable flint tools, some of which he supposed to 
 be of great antiquity, while there were also remains of man 
 in the same cave of a later date.* 
 
 About ten years afterwards, in a < Memoir on the Greology 
 of South Devon,' published in 1842 by the Geological Society 
 of London, f an able geologist, Mr. Grodwin-Austen, de 
 clared that he had obtained in the same cave (Kent's Hole) 
 
 * The MS. and plates prepared for ments of an antique type and the 
 a joint memoir on Kent's Hole, by bones of extinct animals. Two of 
 Mr. M'Enery and Dr. Buckland, have these implements from Kent's Hole, 
 recently been published by Mr. Vivian figured in Plate 12 of the posthumous 
 of Torquay, from which, as well as work above alluded to, approach 
 from some of the unprinted MS., I very closely in form and size to the 
 infer that Mr. M'Enery only refrained common Abbeville implements, 
 out of deference to Dr. Buckland from f Transactions of Geological So- 
 declaring his belief in the contempo- eiety, 2nd series, vol. vi. p. 444. 
 raneousness of certain flint imple- 
 
98 EXPLORATIONS OF THE BRIXHAM CAYE. CHAP, vi. 
 
 works of man from undisturbed loam or clay, under stalag 
 mite, mingled with the remains of extinct animals, and that 
 all these must have been introduced e before the stalagmite 
 flooring had been formed.' He maintained that such facts 
 could not be explained away by the hypothesis of sepulture, 
 as in Dr. Buckland's well-known case of the human skeleton 
 of Paviland, because in the Devon cave the flint implements 
 were widely distributed through the loam, and lay beneath 
 the stalagmite. 
 
 As the osseous and other contents of Kent's Hole had, by 
 repeated diggings, been thrown into much confusion, it was 
 thought desirable in 1858, when the entrance of a new and 
 intact bone-cave was discovered at Brixham, three or four 
 miles west of Torquay, to have a thorough and systematic 
 examination made of it. The Eoyal Society made two 
 grants towards defraying the expenses,* and a committee of 
 geologists was charged with the investigations, among whom 
 Mr. Prestwich and Dr. Falconer took an active part, visiting 
 Torquay while the excavations were in progress under the 
 superintendence of Mr. Pengelly. The last-mentioned geo 
 logist had the kindness to conduct me through the sub 
 terranean galleries after they had been cleared out in 1859 ; 
 and I saw, in company with Dr. Falconer, the numerous 
 fossils which had been taken from the subterranean fissures 
 and tunnels, all labelled and numbered, with references to a 
 journal kept during the progress of the work, and in which 
 the geological position of every specimen was recorded with 
 scrupulous care. 
 
 The discovery of the existence of this suite of caverns near 
 the sea at Brixham was made accidentally by the roof of 
 one of them falling in. None of the five external openings 
 now exposed to view in steep cliffs or the sloping side of a 
 
 * When these grants failed, Miss quay, liberally supplied the funds for 
 Burdett Coutts, then residing at Tor- completing the work. 
 
CHAP. vi. EXPLORATIONS OF THE BRIXHAM CAYE. 99 
 
 valley were visible before the breccia and earthy matter 
 which blocked them up were removed during the late 
 exploration. According to a ground-plan drawn up by 
 Professor Kamsay, it appears that some of the passages 
 which run nearly north and south are fissures connected 
 with the vertical dislocation of the rocks, while another set, 
 running nearly east and west, are tunnels, which have the 
 appearance of having been to a great extent hollowed out by 
 the action of running water. The central or main entrance, 
 leading to what is called the f reindeer gallery,' because a 
 perfect antler of that animal was found sticking in the 
 stalagmitic floor, is ninety-five feet above the level of the 
 sea, being also about sixty above the bottom of the adjoining 
 valley. The united length of the five galleries which were 
 cleared out amounted to several hundred feet. Their width 
 never exceeded eight feet. They were sometimes filled up 
 to the roof with gravel, bones, and mud, but occasionally 
 there was a considerable space between the roof and floor. 
 The latter, in the case of the fissure-caves, was covered with 
 stalagmite, but in the tunnels it was usually free from any 
 such incrustation. The following was the general succession 
 of the deposits forming the contents of the underground 
 passages and channels : 
 
 1st. At the top, a layer of stalagmite varying in thick 
 ness from one to fifteen inches, which sometimes contained 
 bones, such as the reindeer's horn, already mentioned, and 
 an entire humerus of the cave-bear. 
 
 2ndly. Next below, loam or bone-earth, of an ochreous red 
 colour, from one foot to fifteen feet in thickness. 
 
 Srdly. At the bottom of all, gravel with many rounded 
 pebbles in it, probed in some places to the depth of twenty 
 feet without its being pierced through, and as it was barren 
 of fossils, left for the most part unremoved. 
 
 The mammalia obtained from the bone-earth consisted of 
 
100 FLINT KNIVES IN BEIXHAM CAYE. CHAP. VI. 
 
 Elephas primigenius, or mammoth ; Rhinoceros tichorhinus ; 
 Ursus spelceus ; Hycena spelcea ; Felis spelcea, or the cave- 
 lion ; Cervus Tarandus, or the reindeer ; a species of horse, 
 ox, and several rodents, and others not yet determined. 
 
 No human bones were obtained anywhere during these 
 excavations, but many flint knives, chiefly from the lowest 
 part of the bone-earth ; and one of the most perfect lay at 
 the depth of thirteen feet from the surface, and was covered 
 with bone-earth of that thickness. From a similar position 
 was taken one of those siliceous nuclei, or cores, from which 
 flint flakes had been struck off on every side. Neglecting 
 the less perfect specimens, some of which were met with 
 even in the lowest gravel, about fifteen knives, recognised 
 as artificially formed by the most experienced antiquaries, 
 were taken from the bone-earth, and usually from near the 
 bottom. Such knives, considered apart from the associated 
 mammalia, afford in themselves no safe criterion of antiquity, 
 as they might belong to any part of the age of stone, similar 
 tools being sometimes met with in tumuli posterior in date 
 to the era of the introduction of bronze. But the anteriority 
 of those at Brixham to the extinct animals is demonstrated 
 not only by the occurrence at one point in overlying stalagmite 
 of the bone of a cave-bear, but also by the discovery at the 
 same level in the bone-earth, and in close proximity to a 
 very perfect flint tool, of the entire left hind-leg of a cave- 
 bear. This specimen, which was shown me by Dr. Falconer 
 and Mr. Pengelly, was exhumed from the earthy deposit in 
 the reindeer gallery, near its junction with the flint-knife 
 gallery, at the distance of about sixty-five feet from the main 
 entrance. The mass of earth containing it was removed 
 entire, and the matrix cleared away carefully by Dr. Fal 
 coner in the presence of Mr. Pengelly. Every bone was in 
 its natural place, the femur, tibia, fibula, ankle-bone, or 
 astragalus, all in juxta-position. Even the patella or de- 
 
CHAP. vi. BRIXHAM CAVE DEPOSITS. 101 
 
 tached bone of the knee-pan was searched for, and not in 
 vain. Here, therefore, we have evidence of an entire limb 
 not having been washed in a fossil state out of an older 
 alluvium, and then swept afterwards into a cave, so as to be 
 mingled with flint implements, but having been introduced 
 when clothed with its flesh, or at least when it had the 
 separate bones bound together by their natural ligaments, 
 and in that state buried in mud. 
 
 If they were not all of contemporary date, it is clear from 
 this case, and from the humerus of the Ursus spelceus, 
 before cited, as found in a floor of stalagmite, that the bear 
 lived after the flint tools were manufactured, or in other 
 words, that man in this district preceded the cave-bear. 
 
 A glance at the position of the Brixham limestone con 
 taining the ossiferous caverns and fissures, and a brief survey 
 of the valleys which bound it on two sides, are enough to 
 satisfy a geologist that the drainage and geographical fea 
 tures of this region have undergone great changes since the 
 gravel and bone-earth were carried by streams into the sub 
 terranean cavities above described. Some worn pebbles of 
 hematite, in particular, can only have come from their 
 nearest parent rock, at a period when the valleys imme 
 diately adjoining the caves were much shallower than they 
 now are. The reddish loam in which the bones are em 
 bedded is such as may be seen on the surface of limestone in 
 the neighbourhood, but the currents which were formerly 
 charged with such mud must have run at a level sixty feet 
 above that of the stream now flowing in the same valley. 
 It was remarked by Mr. Pengelly, that the pebbles in the 
 gravel and the bones in the loam had their longer axes 
 parallel to the direction of the tunnels and fissures, showing 
 that they were deposited by the action of a stream. 
 
 It appears that so long as the flowing water had force 
 enough to propel stony fragments, no layer of fine mud could 
 
102 INVESTIGATIONS MADE AT ABBEYILLE AND AMIENS. CHAP. vi. 
 
 accumulate, and so long as there was a regular current 
 capable of carrying in fine mud and bones, no superficial 
 crust of stalagmite. In some passages, as before stated, sta 
 lagmite was wanting, while in one place five alternations of 
 stalagmite and sand were observed, seeming to indicate a 
 prevalence of more rainy seasons, succeeded by others, when 
 the water was for a time too low to flood the area where the 
 calcareous incrustation accumulated. 
 
 If the regular sequence of the three deposits of pebbles, 
 mud, and stalagmite was the result of the causes above 
 explained, the order of superposition would be constant, 
 yet we could not be sure that the gravel in one passage 
 might not sometimes be coeval with the bone-earth or stalag 
 mite in another. 
 
 If therefore the flint knives had not been very widely 
 dispersed, and if one of them had not been at the bottom of 
 the bone-earth, close to the leg of the bear above described, 
 their antiquity relatively to the extinct mammalia might 
 have been questioned. No coprolites were found in the 
 Brixham excavations, and very few gnawed bones. These 
 few may have been brought from some distance, before they 
 reached their place of rest. Upon the whole, the same con 
 clusion which Dr. Schmerling came to, respecting the filling 
 up of the caverns near Liege, seems applicable to the caves of 
 Brixham. 
 
 Dr. Falconer, after aiding in the investigations above al 
 luded to near Torquay, stopped at Abbeville on his way to 
 Sicily, in the autumn of 1858, and saw there the collection of 
 M. Boucher de Perthes. Being at once satisfied that the flints 
 called hatchets had really been fashioned by the hand of man, 
 he urged Mr. Prestwich, by letter, thoroughly to explore the 
 geology of the Valley of the Somme. This he accordingly 
 accomplished, in company with Mr. John Evans, of the 
 Society of Antiquaries, and, before his return that same year, 
 
CHAP. vi. INVESTIGATIONS MADE AT ABBEVILLE AND AMIENS. 103 
 
 succeeded in dissipating all doubts from the minds of his geo 
 logical friends by extracting, with his own hands, from a bed of 
 undisturbed gravel, at St. Acheul, a well-shaped flint hatchet. 
 This implement was buried in the gravel at a depth of seven 
 teen feet from the surface, and was lying on its flat side. 
 There were no signs of vertical rents in the enveloping matrix, 
 nor in the overlying beds of sand and loam, in which were many 
 land and fresh-water shells ; so that it was impossible, to ima 
 gine that the tool had gradually worked its way downwards, 
 as some had suggested, through the incumbent soil, into an 
 older formation.* 
 
 There was no one in England whose authority deserved to 
 have more weight in overcoming incredulity in regard to 
 the antiquity of the implements in question than that of 
 Mr. Prestwich, since, besides having published a series of 
 important memoirs on the tertiary formations of Europe, he 
 had devoted many years specially to the study of the drift 
 and its organic remains. His report, therefore, to the Eoyal 
 Society, accompanied by a photograph showing the position 
 of the flint tool in situ before it was removed from its 
 matrix, not only satisfied many inquirers, but induced others 
 to visit Abbeville and Amiens ; and one of these, Mr. Flower, 
 who accompanied Mr. Prestwich on his second excursion to 
 St. Acheul, in June 1859, succeeded, by digging into the 
 bank of gravel, in disinterring, at the depth of twenty-two 
 feet from the surface, a fine, symmetrically shaped weapon 
 of an oval form, tying in and beneath strata which were ob 
 served by many witnesses to be perfectly undisturbed.f 
 
 Shortly afterwards, in the year 1859, I visited the same 
 pits, and obtained seventy flint tools, one of which was taken 
 out while I was present, though I did not see it before it had 
 
 * Prestwich, Proceedings of the f Geological Quarterly Journal, 
 
 Royal Society, 1859, and Philoso- vol. xvi. p. 190. 
 phical Transactions, 1860. 
 
104 INVESTIGATIONS MADE AT ABBEVILLE AND AMIENS. CHAP. vi. 
 
 fallen from the matrix. I expressed my opinion in favour of 
 the antiquity of the flint tools to the meeting of the British 
 Association at Aberdeen, in the same year.* On my way 
 through Eouen, I stated my convictions on this subject to 
 Mr. George Pouchet, who immediately betook himself to 
 St. Acheul, commissioned by the municipality of Eouen, and 
 did not quit the pits till he had seen one of the hatchets 
 extracted from gravel in its natural position, f 
 
 M. Gaudry also gave the foil owing account of his researches 
 in the same year to the Eoyal Academy of Sciences at Paris. 
 ( The great point was not to leave the workmen for a single 
 instant, and to satisfy oneself by actual inspection, whether 
 the hatchets were found in situ. I caused a deep excavation 
 to be made, and found nine hatchets, most distinctly in situ 
 in the diluvium, associated with teeth of Equus fossilis and a 
 species of Bos, different from any now living, and similar to 
 that of the diluvium and of caverns.'J In 1859, M. Hebert, 
 an original observer of the highest authority, declared to the 
 Geological Society of France that he had, in 1854, or four 
 years before Mr. Prestwich's visit to St. Acheul, seen the 
 sections at Abbeville and Amiens, and had come to the 
 opinion that the hatchets were imbedded in the ' lower di 
 luvium,' and that their origin was as ancient as that of the 
 mammoth and the rhinoceros. M. Desnoyers also made 
 excavations after M. Gaudry, at St. Acheul, in 1859, with the 
 same results. 
 
 After a lively discussion on the subject in England and 
 France, it was remembered, not .only that there were nume 
 rous recorded cases leading to similar conclusions in regard to 
 cavern deposits, but, also, that Mr. Frere had, so long ago as 
 
 * See Proceedings of British Asso- | Comptes rendus, September 26th, 
 
 ciation for 1859. and October 3rd, 1859. 
 
 f Actes du Musee d'Histoire Natu- Bulletin, vol. xvii. p. 18. 
 
 relle de Eouen, 1860, p. 33. 
 
CHAP. vi. INVESTIGATIONS MADE AT ABBEVILLE AND AMIENS. 105 
 
 1797, found flint weapons, of the same type as those of Amiens, 
 in a fresh-water formation in Suffolk, in conjunction with 
 elephant remains ; and nearly a hundred years earlier (1715), 
 another tool of the same kind had been exhumed from the 
 gravel of London, together with bones of an elephant ; to 
 all which examples I shall allude more fully in the sequel. 
 
 I may conclude this chapter by quoting a saying of Pro 
 fessor Agassiz, 'that whenever a new and startling fact is 
 brought to light in science, people first say, " it is not true," 
 then that " it is contrary to religion," and lastly, " that every 
 body knew it before." ' 
 
 If I were considering merely the cultivators of geology, I 
 should say that the doctrine of the former co-existence of 
 man with many extinct mammalia had already gone through 
 these three phases in the progress of every scientific truth 
 towards acceptance. But the grounds of this belief have not 
 yet been fully laid before the general public, so as to enable 
 them fairly to weigh and appreciate the evidence. I shall 
 therefore do my best in the next three chapters to accomplish 
 this task. 
 
106 GEOLOGICAL DESCRIPTION OF THE SOMME YALLEY. CHAP. vn. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 PEAT AND POST-PLIOCENE ALLUVIUM OF THE YALLEY OF THE 
 
 SOMME. 
 
 GEOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF THE VALLEY OF THE SOMME AND OF 
 
 THE SURROUNDING COUNTRY POSITION OF ALLUVIUM OF DIFFERENT 
 
 AGES PEAT NEAR ABBEVILLE ITS ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE CON 
 TENTS WORKS OF ART IN PEAT PROBABLE ANTIQUITY OF THE 
 
 PEAT, AND CHANGES OF LEVEL SINCE ITS GROWTH BEGAN FLINT 
 
 IMPLEMENTS OF ANTIQUE TYPE IN OLDER ALLUVIUM THEIR VARIOUS 
 
 FORMS AND GREAT NUMBERS. 
 
 Geological Structure of the Somme Valley. 
 
 rFHE Valley of the Somme in Picardy, alluded to in the last 
 J- chapter, is situated geologically in a region of white 
 chalk with flints, the strata of which are nearly horizontal. 
 The chalk hills which hound the valley are almost everywhere 
 between 200 and 300 feet in height. On ascending to that ele 
 vation, we find ourselves on an extensive table-land, in which 
 there are slight elevations and depressions. The white chalk 
 itself is scarcely ever exposed at the surface on this plateau, 
 although seen on the slopes of the hills, as at b and c (fig, 7 ). 
 The general surface of the upland region is covered continu 
 ously for miles in every direction by loam or brick-earth (No. 4), 
 about five feet thick, devoid of fossils. To the wide extent of 
 this loam the soil of Picardy chiefly owes its great fertility. 
 Here and there we also observe, on the chalk, outlying 
 patches of tertiary sand and clay (No. 5, fig. 7), with eocene 
 fossils, the remnants of a formation once more extensive, and 
 which probably once spread in one continuous mass over the 
 chalk, before the present system of valleys had begun to be 
 shaped out. It is necessary to allude to these relics of 
 
CHAP. VII. GEOLOGICAL DESCRIPTION OP THE SOMME VALLEY. 107 
 
 tertiary strata, of which the larger part is missing, because 
 their denudation has contributed largely to furnish the 
 materials of gravels in which the flint implements and 
 bones of extinct mammalia are entombed. From this 
 source have been derived not only the regular-formed egg- 
 shaped pebbles, so common in the old fluviatile alluvium at 
 all levels, but those huge masses of hard sandstone, several 
 feet in diameter, to which I shall allude in the sequel. The 
 upland loam also (No. 4) has often, in no slight degree, been 
 formed at the expense of the same tertiary sands and clays, as 
 is attested by its becoming more or less sandy or argillaceous, 
 according to the nature of the nearest eocene outlier in the 
 neighbourhood. 
 
 Fig. 7 
 
 Section across the Valley of the Somme in Picardy. 
 
 1 Peat, twenty to thirty feet thick, resting on gravel, a. 
 
 2 Lower level gravel with elephants' bones and flint tools, covered 
 
 with fluviatile loam, twenty to forty feet thick. 
 
 3 Upper level gravel with similar fossils, and with overlying loam, in 
 
 all thirty feet thick. 
 
 4 Upland loam without shells (Limon des plateaux), five or six feet 
 
 thick. 
 
 5 Eocene tertiary strata, resting on the chalk in patches. 
 
 The average width of the Valley of the Somme between 
 Amiens and Abbeville is one mile. The height, therefore, of 
 the hills, in relation to the river-plain, could not be correctly 
 represented in the annexed diagram (fig. 7), the hills having 
 been reduced to one fourth of their altitude. It would other 
 wise have been necessary to make the space between c and b 
 four times as great. The dimensions also of the masses of 
 drift or alluvium, 2 and 3, have been exaggerated, in order to 
 render them sufficiently conspicuous ; for, all important as we 
 shall find them to be as geological monuments of the post- 
 pliocene period, they form a truly insignificant feature in the 
 
108 PEAT OF THE VALLEY OF THE SOMME. CHAP. vn. 
 
 general structure of the country, so much so, that they might 
 easily be overlooked in a cursory survey of the district, and 
 are usually unnoticed in geological maps not specially devoted 
 to the superficial formations. 
 
 It will be seen by the description given of the section, fig. 7, 
 that No. 2 indicates the lower level gravels, and No. 3 the 
 higher ones, or those rising to elevations of eighty or a hundred 
 feet above the river. Newer than these is the peat No. 1, which 
 is from ten to thirty feet in thickness, and which is not only of 
 later date than the alluvium, 2 and 3, but is also posterior to 
 the denudation of those gravels, or to the time when the valley 
 was excavated through them. Underneath the peat is a bed 
 of gravel, a, from three to fourteen feet thick, which rests on 
 undisturbed chalk. This gravel was probably formed, in part 
 at least, when the valley was scooped out to its present 
 depth, since which time no geological change has taken place, 
 except the growth of the peat, and certain oscillations in the 
 general level of the country, to which we shall allude by and 
 by. A thin layer of impervious clay separates the gravel a from 
 the peat No. 1, and seems to have been a necessary pre 
 liminary to the growth of the peat. 
 
 Peat of the Valley of the Somme. 
 
 As hitherto, in our retrospective survey, we have been 
 obliged, for the sake of proceeding from the known to the 
 less known, to reverse the natural order of history, and to 
 treat of the newer before the older formations, I shall begin 
 my account of the geological monuments of the Valley of the 
 Somme by saying something of the most modern of all of 
 them, the peat. This substance occupies the lower parts of 
 the valley far above Amiens, and below Abbeville as far as 
 the sea. It has already been stated to be in some places thirty 
 feet thick, and is even occasionally more than thirty feet, 
 
CHAP. vii. PEAT OF ABBEVILLE. 109 
 
 corresponding in that respect to the Danish mosses before de 
 scribed (Ch. II.). Like them, it belongs to the recent period ; 
 all the embedded mammalia, as well as the shells, being of 
 the same species as those now inhabiting Europe. The bones 
 of quadrupeds are very numerous, as I can bear witness, 
 having seen them brought up from a considerable depth near 
 Abbeville, almost as often as the dredging instrument was 
 used. Besides remains of the beaver, I was shown, in the col 
 lection of M. Boucher de Perthes, two perfect lower jaws with 
 teeth of the bear, Ursus Arctos ; and in the Paris Museum 
 there is another specimen, also from the Abbeville peat. 
 
 The list of mammalia already comprises a large proportion 
 of those proper to the Swiss lake-dwellings, and to the shell- 
 mounds and peat of Denmark ; but unfortunately as yet no 
 special study has been made of the French fauna, like that 
 by which the Danish and Swiss zoologists and botanists have 
 enabled us to compare the wild and tame animals and the 
 vegetation of the age of stone with that of the age of iron. 
 
 Notwithstanding the abundance of mammalian bones in 
 the peat, and the frequency of stone implements of the Celtic 
 and Gallo-Eoman periods, M. Boucher de Perthes has only 
 met with three or four fragments of human skeletons. 
 
 At some depth in certain places in the valley near Abbe 
 ville, the trunks of alders have been found standing erect as 
 they grew, with their roots fixed in an ancient soil, afterwards 
 covered with peat. Stems of the hazel, and nuts of the same, 
 abound ; trunks, also, of the oak and walnut. The peat 
 extends to the coast, and is there seen passing under the 
 sand-dunes and below the sea-level. At the mouth of the 
 river Canche, which joins the sea near the embouchure of 
 the Somme, yew trees, firs, oaks, and hazels have been dug 
 out of peat, which is there worked for fuel, and is about three 
 feet thick.* During great storms, large masses of compact 
 
 * D'Archiac, Hist, des Progres, vol. ii. p. 154. 
 
110 PROBABLE ANTIQUITY OF PEAT. CHAP. vn. 
 
 peat, enclosing trunks of flattened trees, have been thrown 
 up on the coast at the mouth of the Somme; seeming to 
 indicate that there has been a subsidence of the land and a 
 consequent submergence of what was once a westward con 
 tinuation of the Valley of the Somme into what is now a 
 part of the British Channel, or La Manche. 
 
 Whether the vegetation of the lowest layers of peat differed 
 as to the geographical distribution of some of the trees from 
 the middle, and this from the uppermost peat, as in Denmark, 
 has not yet been ascertained ; nor have careful observations 
 been made with a view of calculating the minimum of time 
 which the accumulation of so dense a mass of vegetable matter 
 must have taken. A foot in thickness of highly compressed 
 peat, such as is sometimes reached in the bottom of the bogs, 
 is obviously the equivalent in time of a much greater thickness 
 of peat of spongy and loose texture, found near the surface. 
 The workmen who cut peat, or dredge it up from the bottom 
 of swamps and ponds, declare that in the course of their lives 
 none of the hollows which they have found, or caused by ex 
 tracting peat, have ever been refilled, even to a small extent. 
 They deny, therefore, that the peat grows. This, as M. Boucher 
 de Perthes observes, is a mistake ; but it implies that the 
 increase in one generation is not very appreciable by the 
 unscientific. 
 
 The antiquary finds near the surface Grallo-Eoman remains, 
 and still deeper Celtic weapons of the stone period. But the 
 depth at which Roman works of art occur varies in different 
 places, and is no sure test of age ; because in some parts of 
 the swamps, especially near the river, the peat is often so fluid 
 that heavy substances may sink through it, carried down by 
 their own gravity. In one case, however, M. Boucher de 
 Perthes observed several large flat dishes of Roman pottery, 
 lying in a horizontal position in the peat, the shape of 
 which must have prevented them from sinking or penetrating 
 
CHAP. \ii. CHANGES OF LEVEL. Ill 
 
 through the underlying peat. Allowing about fourteen cen 
 turies for the growth of the superincumbent vegetable matter, 
 he calculated that the thickness gained in a hundred years 
 would be no more than three French centimetres.* This rate 
 of increase would demand so many tens of thousands of years 
 for the formation of the entire thickness of thirty feet, that 
 we must hesitate before adopting it as a chronometric scale. 
 Yet, by multiplying observations of this kind, and bringing 
 one to bear upon and check another, we may eventually suc 
 ceed in obtaining data for estimating the age of the peaty 
 deposit. 
 
 The rate of increase in Denmark may not be applicable to 
 France ; because differences in the humidity of the climate, 
 or in the intensity and duration of summer's heat and winter's 
 cold, as well as diversity in the species of plants which most 
 abound, would cause the peat to grow more or less rapidly, 
 not only when we compare two distinct countries in Europe, 
 but the same country at two successive periods. 
 
 I have already alluded to some facts which favour the idea 
 that there has been a change of level on the coast since the 
 peat began to grow. This conclusion seems confirmed by the 
 mere thickness of peat at Abbeville, and the occurrence of 
 alder and hazel-wood near the bottom of it. If thirty feet 
 of peat were now removed, the sea would flow up and fill the 
 valley for miles above Abbeville. Yet this vegetable matter 
 is all of submarine or fresh-water origin, for where aquatic 
 shells occur in it they are all of terrestrial or fluviatile kinds, 
 so that it must have grown above the sea-level when the 
 land was more elevated than now. We have already seen 
 what changes in the relative level of sea and land have oc 
 curred in Scotland subsequently to the time of the Eomans, 
 and are therefore prepared to meet with proofs of similar 
 movements in Picardy. In that country they have probably 
 
 * Antiquites Celtiques, vol. ii. p. 134. 
 
112 FLINT IMPLEMENTS IN VALLEY OF THE SOMME. CHAP. vir. 
 
 not been confined simply to subsidence, but have comprised 
 oscillations in the level of the land, by which marine shells 
 of the post-pliocene period have been raised some ten feet or 
 more above the level of the sea. 
 
 Small as is the progress hitherto made in interpreting the 
 pages of the peaty record, their importance in the Valley of 
 the Somme is enhanced by the reflection that, whatever be 
 the number of centuries to which they relate, they belong 
 to times posterior to the ancient implement-bearing beds, 
 which we are next to consider, and are even separated from 
 them, as we shall see, by an interval far greater than that 
 which divides the earliest strata of the peat from the latest. 
 
 Flint Implements of the Post-pliocene Period in the Valley 
 of the Somme. 
 
 The alluvium of the Valley of the Somme exhibits no 
 thing extraordinary or exceptional in its position or external 
 appearance, nor in the arrangement or composition of its 
 materials, nor in its organic remains ; in all these cha 
 racters it might be matched by the drift of a hundred other 
 valleys in France or England. Its claim to our peculiar 
 attention is derived from the wonderful number of flint 
 tools, of a very antique type, which, as stated in the last 
 chapter, occur in undisturbed strata, associated with the 
 bones of extinct quadrupeds. 
 
 As much doubt has been cast on the question, whether the 
 so-called flint hatchets have really been shaped by the hands 
 of man, it will be desirable to begin by satisfying the reader's 
 mind on that point, before inviting him to study the details 
 of sections of successive beds of mud, sand, and gravel, which 
 vary considerably even in contiguous localities. 
 
 Since the spring of 1859, I have paid three visits to 
 the Valley of the Somme, and examined all the principal 
 
CHAP. vii. FLINT IMPLEMENTS IN VALLEY OF THE SOMME. 113 
 
 localities of these flint tools. In my excursions around 
 Abbeville, I was accompanied by M. Boucher de Perthes, 
 and during one of my explorations in the Amiens district, by 
 Mr. Prestwich. The first time I entered the pits at 
 St. Acheul, I obtained seventy flint instruments, all of them 
 collected from the drift in the course of the preceding five 
 or six weeks. The two prevailing forms of these tools are 
 represented in the annexed figures 8 and 9, each of which are 
 half the size of the originals ; the first being the spear-headed 
 form, varying in length from six to eight inches ; the second, 
 the oval form, which is not unlike some stone implements, 
 used to this day as hatchets and tomahawks by natives of 
 Australia, but with this difference, that the edge in the 
 Australian weapons (as in the case of those called celts in 
 Europe) has been produced by friction, whereas the cutting 
 edge in the old tools of the Valley of the Somme was always 
 gained by the simple fracture of the flint, and by the 
 repetition of many dexterous blows. 
 
 The oval-shaped Australian weapons, however, differ in 
 being sharpened at one end only. The other, though reduced 
 by fracture to the same general form, is left rough, in which 
 state it is fixed into a cleft stick, which serves as a handle. 
 To this it is firmly bound by thin straps of opossum's hide. 
 One of these tools, now in my possession, was given me by 
 Mr, Farquharson of Haughton, who saw a native using it in 
 1854, on the Auburn river, in Burnet district, North Australia. 
 
 Out of more than a hundred flint implements which I 
 obtained at St. Acheul, not a few had their edges more or 
 less fractured or worn, either by use as instruments before 
 they were buried in gravel, or by being rolled in the river's 
 bed. 
 
 Some of these tools were probably used as weapons, both 
 of war and of the chase, others to grub up roots, cut down 
 trees, and scoop out canoes. Some of them may have served, 
 
 i 
 
114 
 
 FLINT IMPLEMENTS IN VALLEY OF THE SOMME. 
 
 CHAP. VII. 
 
 Fig. 8 
 
 Flint implement from St. Acheul, near Amiens, of the spear-head shape. 
 
 Fig. 8 Half the size of the original, which is seven and a half inches long. 
 a Side view. b Same seen edgewise. 
 
 These spear-headed implements have been found in greater number, pro 
 portionally to the oval ones, in the upper level gravel at St. Acheul, than 
 in any of the lower gravels in the valley of the Somme. In these last the 
 oval form predominates, especially at Abbeville. 
 
CHAP. VII. FLINT IMPLEMENTS IN VALLEY OF THE SOMME. 115 
 
 Fig. 10 
 
 Flint implements from the Post-pliocene Drift of Abbeville and Amiens. 
 
 Fig. 9 a Oval-shaped flint hatchet from Mautort, near Abbeville, half 
 size of original, which is five and a half inches long, from a bed of gravel 
 underlying the fluvio-marine stratum. 
 
 b Same seen edgewise. 
 
 c Shows a recent fracture of the edge of the same at the point a, or 
 near the top. This portion of the tool, c, is drawn of the natural 
 size, the black central part being the unaltered flint, the white 
 outer coating, the layer which has been formed by discoloration 
 or bleaching since the tool was first made. 
 
 The entire surface of No. 9 must have been black when first shaped, 
 and the bleaching to such a depth must have been the work of 
 time, whether produced by exposure to the sun and air before it 
 was embedded, or afterwards when it lay deep in the soil. 
 
 Fig. 10. Flint tool from St. Acheul, seen edgewise; original, six and a half 
 inches long, and three inches wide. 
 
 b, c Portion not artificially shaped. 
 
 b, a Part chipped into shape, and having a cutting edge at a. 
 
 I 2 
 
116 FLINT IMPLEMENTS IN VALLEY OF THE SOMME. CHAP. vn. 
 
 as Mr. Prestwich has suggested, for cutting holes in the ice 
 both for fishing and for obtaining water, as will be explained 
 in the 8th chapter when we consider the arguments in favour 
 of the higher level drift having belonged to a period when 
 the rivers were frozen over for several months every winter. 
 
 When the natural form of a chalk-flint presented a 
 suitable handle at one end, as in the specimen, fig. 10, that 
 part was left as found. The portion, for example, between 
 b and c has probably not been altered ; the protuberances 
 which are fractured having been broken off by river action 
 before the flint was chipped artificially. The other ex 
 tremity, a, has been worked till it acquired a proper shape 
 and cutting edge. 
 
 Many of the hatchets are stained of an ochreous-yellow 
 colour, when they have been buried in yellow gravel, others 
 have acquired white or brown tints, according to the matrix 
 in which they have been enclosed. 
 
 This accordance in the colouring of the flint tools with the 
 character of the bed from which they have come, indicates, 
 says Mr. Prestwich, not only a real derivation from such strata, 
 but also a sojourn therein of equal duration to that of the 
 naturally broken flints forming part of the same beds.* 
 
 The surface of many of the tools is encrusted with a film 
 of carbonate of lime, while others are adorned by those 
 ramifying crystallisations called dendrites (see figs. 11 13), 
 usually consisting of the mixed oxyds of iron and manganese, 
 forming extremely delicate blackish brown sprigs, resembling 
 the smaller kinds of sea weed. They are a useful test of 
 antiquity when suspicions are entertained of the workmen 
 having forged the hatchets which they offer for sale. The 
 most general test, however, of the genuineness of the imple 
 ments obtained by purchase is their superficial varnish-like 
 or vitreous gloss, as contrasted with the dull aspect of freshly 
 
 * Philosophical Transactions, 1861, p. 297. 
 
CHAP. vii. FLINT IMPLEMENTS IN VALLEY OF THE SOMME. 117 
 
 fractured flints. I also remarked, during each of my three 
 visits to Amiens, that there were some extensive gravel-pits, 
 such as those of Montiers and St. Roch, agreeing in their 
 geological character with those of St. Acheul, and only a mile 
 or two distant, where the workmen, although familiar with 
 the forms, and knowing the marketable value of the articles 
 above described, assured me that they had never been able 
 to find a single implement. 
 
 Fig. 12 Fig. 13 
 
 Dendrites on surfaces of flint hatchets in the drift of St. Acheul, near Amiens. 
 
 Fig. 11, a Natural size. Fig. 12, b Natural size. c Magnified. 
 
 Fig. 13, d Natural size, e Magnified. 
 
 Respecting the authenticity of the tools as works of 
 art, Professor Ramsay, than whom no one could be a more 
 competent judge, observes : ' For more than twenty years, 
 like others of my craft, I have daily handled stones, whether 
 fashioned by nature or art ; and the flint hatchets of Amiens 
 and Abbeville seem to me as clearly works of art as any 
 Sheffield whittle.'* 
 
 Mr. Evans classifies the implements under three heads, 
 two of which, the spear heads and the oval or almond-shaped 
 kinds, have already been described. The third form, fig. 14, 
 consists of flakes, apparently intended for knives or some 
 of the smaller ones for arrow heads. 
 
 In regard to their origin, Mr. Evans observes that there 
 is a uniformity of shape, a correctness of outline, and a 
 sharpness about the cutting edges and points, which cannot 
 be due to anything but design. f 
 
 Of these knives and flakes, I obtained several specimens 
 
 * Athenaeum, July 16, 1859. f Archseologica, voL xxxviii. 
 
118 THEIR FORMS AND GREAT NUMBERS. CHA.P. vii. 
 
 from a pit which I caused to be dug at Abbeville, in sand in 
 contact with the chalk, and below certain fluvio-marine beds, 
 which will be alluded to in the next chapter. 
 
 Flint knife or flake from below the sand containing Cyrena flnminalis. 
 Menchecourt, Abbeville. 
 
 d Transverse section along the line of fracture, b, c. 
 Size, two-thirds of the original. 
 
 Between the spear-head and oval shapes, there are various 
 intermediate gradations, and there are also a vast variety of 
 very rude implements, many of which may have been rejected 
 as failures, and others struck off as chips in the course of 
 manufacturing the more perfect ones. Some of these chips 
 can only be recognised by an experienced eye as bearing 
 marks of human workmanship. 
 
 It has often been asked, how, without the use of metallic 
 hammers, so many of these oval and spear-headed tools could 
 have been wrought into so uniform a shape. Mr. Evans, in 
 order experimentally to illustrate the process, constructed a 
 stone hammer, by mounting a pebble in a wooden handle, 
 and with this tool struck off flakes from the edge on both 
 sides of a chalk flint, till it acquired precisely the same shape 
 as the oval tool, fig, 9,*p. 115. 
 
 If I were invited to estimate the probable number of the 
 more perfect tools found in the valley of the Somme since 
 1842, rejecting all the knives, and all that might be suspected 
 of being spurious or forged, I should conjecture that they far 
 exceeded a thousand. Yet it would be a great mistake to 
 imagine that an antiquary or geologist, who should devote 
 a few weeks to the exploration of such a valley as that of the 
 
CHAP. vn. GLOBULAR SPONGES ARTIFICIALLY PERFORATED. 119 
 
 Somme, would himself be able to detect a single specimen. 
 But few tools were lying on the surface. The rest have been 
 exposed to view by the removal of such a volume of sand, 
 clay, and gravel, that the price of the discovery of one of 
 them could only be estimated by knowing how many hundred 
 labourers have toiled at the fortifications of Abbeville, or in 
 the sand and gravel pits near that city, and around Amiens, 
 for road materials and other economical purposes, during the 
 last twenty years. 
 
 In the gravel pits of St. Acheul, and in some others near 
 Amiens, small round bodies, having a tubular cavity in the 
 centre, occur. They are well known as fossils of the white 
 chalk. Dr. Eigollot suggested that they might have been 
 
 a, b Coscinopora globularis If Orb. Orbitolina concava Parker and Jones, 
 c Part of the same magnified. 
 
 strung together as beads, and he supposed the hole in the 
 middle to have been artificial. Some of these round bodies 
 are found entire in the chalk and in the gravel, others have 
 naturally a hole passing through them, and sometimes one 
 or two holes penetrating some way in from the surface, 
 but not extending to the other side. Others, like 6, fig. 15, 
 have a large cavity, which has a very artificial aspect. 
 It is impossible to decide whether they have or have not 
 served as personal ornaments, recommended by their globular 
 form, lightness, and by being less destructible than ordinary 
 chalk. Granting that there were natural cavities in the axis of 
 some of them, it does not follow that these may not have been 
 taken advantage of for stringing them as beads, while others 
 may have been artificially bored through. Dr. Rigollot's 
 
120 GLOBULAR SPONGES ARTIFICIALLY PERFORATED. CHAP. vn. 
 
 argument in favour of their having been used as necklaces or 
 bracelets, appears to me a sound one. He says he often found 
 small heaps or groups of them in one place, all perforated, just 
 as if, when swept into the river's bed by a flood, the bond which 
 had united them together remained unbroken.* 
 
 * Kigollot, M&noire sur des Instruments en Silex, &c. p. 16. Amiens, 1854. 
 
CHAP. vin. LOWER-LEVEL GRAVELS OF THE SOMME VALLEY. 121 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 POST-PLIOCENE ALLUVIUM WITH FLINT IMPLEMENTS OF THE 
 VALLEY OF THE SOMME, 
 
 Concluded. 
 
 FLUVIO-MARINE STRATA, WITH FLINT IMPLEMENTS, NEAR ABBEVILLE 
 
 MARINE SHELLS IN SAME CYRENA FLUMINALIS MAMMALIA 
 
 ENTIRE SKELETON OF RHINOCEROS FLINT IMPLEMENTS, WHY FOUND 
 
 LOW DOWN IN FLUVIATILE DEPOSITS RIVERS SHIFTING THEIR 
 
 CHANNELS RELATIVE AGES OF HIGHER AND LOWER-LEVEL GRAVELS 
 
 SECTION OF ALLUVIUM OF ST. ACHEUL TWO SPECIES OF ELEPHANT 
 
 AND HIPPOPOTAMUS COEXISTING WITH MAN IN FRANCE VOLUME OF 
 
 DRIFT, PROVING ANTIQUITY OF FLINT IMPLEMENTS ABSENCE OF 
 
 HUMAN BONES IN TOOL-BEARING ALLUVIUM, HOW EXPLAINED VALUE 
 
 OF CERTAIN KINDS OF NEGATIVE EVIDENCE TESTED THEREBY 
 
 HUMAN BONES NOT FOUND IN DRAINED LAKE OF HAARLEM. 
 
 IN the section of the valley of the Somme, given at p. 106 
 (fig. 7), the successive formations newer than the chalk 
 are numbered in chronological order, beginning with the 
 most modern, or the peat, which is marked No. 1, and 
 which has been treated of in the last chapter. Next in the 
 order of antiquity are the lower-level gravels No. 2, which we 
 have now to describe; after which the alluvium, No. 3, found 
 at higher levels, or about eighty and one hundred feet above 
 the river-plain, will remain to be considered. 
 
 I have selected, as illustrating the old alluvium of the 
 Somme occurring at levels slightly elevated above the present 
 river, the sand and gravel-pits of Menchecourt, in the north 
 west suburbs of Abbeville, to which, as before stated, p. 94, 
 attention was first drawn by M. Boucher de Perthes, in his 
 work on Celtic antiquities. Here, although in every adjoin- 
 
*122 SECTION OF STEATA AT MENCHECOURT. CHAP. VIIT. 
 
 ing pit some minor variations in the nature and thickness of 
 the superimposed deposits may be seen, there is yet a general 
 approach to uniformity in the series. The only stratum of 
 which the relative age is somewhat doubtful, is the gravel 
 marked a, underlying the peat, and resting on the chalk. It 
 is only known by borings, and some of it may be of the same 
 age as No. 3 ; but I believe it to be for the most part of more 
 modern origin, consisting of the wreck of all the older gravel, 
 including No. 3, and formed during the last hollowing out 
 
 Fig. 16 
 
 Chalk ^ ^^ 
 
 ^a** n 2 Somme .R 
 
 !!!*^nnii = 
 
 Sea, Level 
 
 Chalk 
 
 Section of fluvio-marine strata, containing flint implements and bones of extinct 
 mammalia, at Menchecourt, Abbeville.* 
 
 1 Brown clay with angular flints, and occasionally chalk rubble, unstratified, 
 following the slope of the hill, probably of subaerial origin, of very varying 
 thickness, from two to five feet and upwards. 
 
 2 Calcareous loam, buff-coloured, resembling loess, for the most part un 
 stratified, in some places with slight traces of stratification, containing 
 freshwater and land shells, with bones of elephants, &c. ; thickness about 
 fifteen feet. 
 
 3 Alternations of beds of gravel, marl, and sand, with freshwater and land 
 shells, and in some of the lower sands, a mixture of marine shells ; also 
 bones of elephant, rhinoceros, &c., and flint implements ; thickness about 
 twelve feet. 
 
 a Gravel underlying peat, age undetermined. 
 
 b Layer of impervious clay, separating the gravel from the peat. 
 
 and deepening of the valley immediately before the com 
 mencement of the growth of peat. 
 
 The greater number of flint implements have been dug out 
 of No. 3, often near the bottom, and twenty-five, thirty, or 
 even more than thirty feet below the surface of No. 1. 
 
 * For detailed sections and maps of this district, seePrestwich, Philosophical 
 Transactions, 1860, p. 277. 
 
CHAP. viil. MARINE SHELLS AT MENCHECOURT. 123 
 
 A geologist will perceive by a glance at the section that 
 the valley of the Somme must have been excavated nearly 
 to its present depth and width when the strata of No. 3 were 
 thrown down, and that after the deposits Nos. 3, 2, and 1 had 
 been formed in succession, the present valley was scooped 
 out, patches only of Nos. 3 and 2 being left. For these 
 deposits cannot originally have ended abruptly as they now 
 do, but must have once been continuous farther towards the 
 centre of the valley. 
 
 To begin with the oldest, No. 3, it is made up of a suc 
 cession of beds, chiefly of freshwater origin, but occasionally 
 a mixture of marine and fluviatile shells is observed in it, 
 proving that the sea sometimes gained upon the river, whether 
 at high tides or when the fresh water was less in quantity 
 during the dry season, and sometimes perhaps when the land 
 was slightly depressed in level. All these accidents might 
 occur again and again at the mouth of any river, and give rise 
 to alternations of fluviatile and marine strata, such as are 
 seen at Menchecourt. 
 
 In the lowest beds of gravel and sand in contact with the 
 chalk, flint hatchets, some perfect, others much rolled, have 
 been found; and in a sandy bed in this position some work 
 men, whom I employed to sink a pit, found four flint knives. 
 Above this sand and gravel occur beds of white and siliceous 
 sand, containing shells of the genera Planorbis, Limnea, 
 Paludina, Valvata, Cyclas, Cyrena, Helix, and others, all now 
 natives of the same part of France, except Cyrena fluminalis 
 (fig. 17), which no longer lives in Europe, but inhabits the 
 Nile, and many parts of Asia, including Cashmere, where it 
 abounds. No species of Cyrena is now met with in a living 
 state in Europe. Mr. Prestwich first observed it fossil at 
 Menchecourt, and it has since been found in two or three 
 contiguous sand-pits, always in the fluvio-marine bed. 
 
 The following marine shells occur mixed with the fresh- 
 
124 
 
 SPECIFIC NAMES OF CYRENA FLUMINALIS. 
 
 CHAF. VIII. 
 
 water species above enumerated: Buccinum undatum, Lit- 
 torina littorea, Nassa reticulata, Purpura lapillus, Tellina 
 solidula, Cardium edule, and fragments of some others. 
 Several of these I have myself collected entire, though in a 
 state of great decomposition, lying in the white sand called 
 6 sable aigre ' by the workmen. They are all littoral species 
 now proper to the contiguous coast of France. Their oc 
 currence in a fossil state associated with freshwater shells at 
 Menchecourt, had been noticed as long ago as 1836 by 
 
 Fig. 17 
 
 a Interior of left valve, from Gray's Thurrock, Essex. 
 
 b Hinge of same- magnified. 
 
 c Interior of right valve of a small specimen, from Shacklewell, London. 
 
 d Outer surface of right valve, from Erith, Kent. 
 
 Cyrena fluminalis Muller 
 
 Euphratis Chemnitz 
 consobrina Gaillaud 
 trigonula 8. Wood . 
 gemmelarii Philippi 
 Duchastelii Nyst 
 
 Corbicula fluminalis Morsch 
 
 Dates of Specific Names. 
 . 1774 
 . 1782 
 . 1823 
 . 1834 
 . 1836 
 . 1838 
 1853 
 
 MM. Ravin and Baillon, before M. Boucher de Perthes com 
 menced the researches which have since made the locality 
 so celebrated.* The numbers since collected preclude all 
 idea of their having been brought inland as eatable shells by 
 the fabricators of the flint hatchets found at the bottom 
 
 * D'Archiac, Histoire des Progres, &c.,vol. ii. p. 154. 
 
CHAP. viii. MAMMALIA FOUND AT MENCHECOURT. 125 
 
 of the fluvio-marine sands. From the same beds, and in 
 marls alternating with the sands, remains of the elephant, 
 rhinoceros, and other mammalia, have been exhumed. 
 
 Above the fluvio-marine strata are those designated No. 2 
 in the section (fig. 16), which are almost devoid of strati 
 fication, and probably formed of mud or sediment thrown 
 down by the waters of the river when they overflowed the 
 ancient alluvial plain of that day. Some land shells, a few 
 river shells, and bones of mammalia, some of them extinct, 
 occur in No. 2. Its upper surface has been deeply furrowed 
 and cut into by the action of water, at the time when the 
 earthy matter of No. 1 was superimposed. The materials of 
 this uppermost deposit are arranged as if they had been the 
 result of land floods, taking place after the formations 2 and 
 3 had been raised, or had become exposed to denudation. 
 
 The fluvio-marine strata and overlying loam of Menche- 
 court recur on the opposite or left bank of the alluvial 
 plain of the Somme, at a distance of two or three miles. 
 They are found at Mautort, among other places, and I ob 
 tained there the flint hatchet figured at p. 115 (fig. 9), of an 
 oval form. It was extracted from gravel, above which were 
 strata containing a mixture of marine and freshwater shells, 
 precisely like those of Menchecourt. In the alluvium of all 
 parts of the valley, both at high and low levels, rolled bones 
 are sometimes met with in the gravel. Some of the flint 
 tools in the gravel of Abbeville have their angles very 
 perfect, others have been much triturated, as if in the bed 
 of the main river or some of its tributaries. 
 
 The mammalia most frequently cited as having been 
 found in the deposits Nos. 2 and 3 at Menchecourt, are the 
 following : 
 
 Elephas primigenius. 
 Rhinoceros tichorhinus. 
 Equus fossilis Owen. 
 
126 ENTIRE SKELETON OF RHINOCEROS. CHAP. vin. 
 
 Bos primigenius. 
 
 Cervus somonensis Cuvier. 
 
 C. Tarandus prisons Cuvier. 
 
 Felis spelcea. 
 
 Hycena spelcea. 
 
 The ZTrsus spelceus has also been mentioned by some 
 writers ; but M. Lartet says he has sought in vain for it 
 among the osteological treasures sent from Abbeville to Cuvier 
 at Paris, and in other collections. The same palaeontologist, 
 after a close scrutiny of the bones sent formerly to the Paris 
 Museum from the valley of the Somme, observed that some 
 of them bore the evident marks of an instrument, agreeing 
 well with incisions such as a rude flint-saw would produce. 
 Among other bones mentioned as having been thus artificially 
 cut, are those of a Rhinoceros tichorhinus, and the antlers of 
 Cervus somonensis.* 
 
 The evidence obtained by naturalists that some of the 
 extinct mammalia of Menchecourt really lived and died in 
 this part of France, at the time of the embedding of the flint 
 tools in fluviatile strata, is most satisfactory ; and not the less 
 so for having been put on record long before any suspicion 
 was entertained that works of art would ever be detected 
 in the same beds. Thus M. Baillon, writing in 1834 to 
 M. Ravin, says, ( They begin to meet with fossil bones at 
 the depth of ten or twelve feet in the Menchecourt sand-pits, 
 but they find a much greater quantity at the depth of eighteen 
 and twenty feet. Some of them were evidently broken before 
 they were embedded, others are rounded, having, without 
 doubt, been rolled by running water. It is at the bottom of 
 the sand-pits that the most entire bones occur. Here they 
 lie without having undergone fracture or friction, and seem 
 to have been articulated together at the time when they 
 were covered up. I found in one place a whole hind limb 
 * Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, London, vol. xvi. p. 471. 
 
CHAP. VITT. FLINT IMPLEMENTS, WHY FOUND IN DEEP DEPOSITS. 127 
 
 of a rhinoceros, the bones of which were still in their usual 
 relative position. They must have been joined together by 
 ligaments, and even surrounded by muscles at the time of 
 their interment. The entire skeleton of the same species 
 was lying at a short distance from the spot.' * 
 
 If we suppose that the greater number of the flint imple 
 ments occurring in the neighbourhood of Abbeville and 
 Amiens were brought by river action into their present 
 position, we can at once explain why so large a proportion of 
 them are found at considerable depths from the surface, for 
 they would naturally be buried in gravel and not in fine 
 sediment, or what may be termed ' inundation mud,' such as 
 No. 2 (fig. 16, p. 122), a deposit from tranquil water, or where 
 the stream had not sufficient force or velocity to sweep along 
 chalk flints, whether wrought or unwrought. Hence we 
 have almost always to pass down through a mass of incum 
 bent loam with land shells, or through fine sand with fresh 
 water mollusks, before we get into the beds of gravel con 
 taining hatchets. Occasionally a weapon used as a projectile 
 may have fallen into quiet water, or may have dropped 
 from a canoe to the bottom of the river, or may have been 
 floated by ice, as are some stones occasionally by the Thames 
 in severe winters, and carried over the meadows bordering its 
 banks ; but such cases are exceptional, though helping to 
 explain how isolated flint tools or pebbles and angular stones 
 are now and then to be seen in the midst of the finest loams. 
 
 The endless variety in the sections of the alluvium of the 
 valley of the Somme, may be ascribed to the frequent silting 
 up of the main stream and its tributaries during different 
 stages of the excavation of the valley, probably also during 
 changes in the level of the land. As a rule, when a river 
 attacks and undermines one bank, it throws down gravel and 
 sand on the opposite side of its channel, which is growing 
 
 * Musee Societe Roy. d'Emulation d' Abbeville, 1834, p. 197. 
 
128 RIVERS SHIFTING THEIR CHANNELS. CHAP. VTII. 
 
 shallower, and is soon destined to be raised so high as to form 
 an addition to the alluvial plain, and to be only occasionally 
 inundated. In this way, after much encroachment on cliff or 
 meadow in one direction, we find at the end of centuries that 
 the width of the channel has not been enlarged, for the new 
 made ground is raised after a time to the full height of the 
 older alluvial tract. Sometimes an island is formed in mid 
 stream, the current flowing for a while on both sides of it, 
 and at length scooping out a deeper channel on one side so 
 as to leave the other to be gradually filled up during freshets 
 and afterwards elevated by inundation mud, or ' brick-earth.' 
 During the levelling up of these old channels, a flood some 
 times cuts into and partially removes portions of the previously 
 stratified matter, causing those repeated signs of furrowing 
 and filling up of cavities, those memorials of doing and 
 undoing, of which the tool-bearing sands and gravels of 
 Abbeville and Amiens afford such reiterated illustrations, and 
 of which a parallel is furnished by the ancient alluvium of the 
 Thames valley, where similar bones of extinct mammalia and 
 shells, including Cyrena fluminalis, are found. 
 
 Professor Noeggerath, of Bonn, informs me that, about the 
 year 1845, when the bed of the Khine was deepened artifi 
 cially by the blasting and removal of rock in the narrows at 
 Bingerloch, not far from Bingen, several flint hatchets and 
 an extraordinary number of iron weapons of the Roman 
 period were brought up by the dredge from the bed of the 
 great river. The decomposition of the iron had caused much 
 of the gravel to be cemented together into a conglomerate. 
 In such a case we have only to suppose the Rhine to deviate 
 slightly from its course, changing its position, as it has often 
 done in various parts of its plain in historical times, and then 
 tools of the stone and iron periods w6uld be found in gravel 
 at the bottom, with a great thickness of sand and overlying 
 loam deposited above them. 
 
CHAP. vin. RIVEES SHIFTING THEIR CHANNELS. 129 
 
 Changes in a river plain, such as those above alluded to, 
 give rise frequently to ponds, swamps, and marshes, marking 
 the course of old beds or branches of the river not yet filled 
 up, and in these depressions shells proper both to running 
 and stagnant water may be preserved, and quadrupeds may 
 be mired. The latest and uppermost deposit of the series 
 will be loam or brick-earth, with land and amphibious shells 
 (Helix and Succinea), while below will follow strata contain 
 ing freshwater shells, implying continuous submergence; 
 and lowest of all in most sections will be the coarse gravel 
 accumulated by a current of considerable strength and 
 velocity. 
 
 When the St. Katharine docks were excavated at London, 
 and similar works executed on the banks of the Mersey, old 
 ships were dug out, as I have elsewhere noticed,* showing 
 how the Thames and Mersey have in modern times been 
 shifting their channels. Recently, an old silted-up bed of 
 the Thames has been discovered by boring at Shoeburyness 
 at the mouth of the river opposite Sheerness, as I learn from 
 Mr. Milne. The old deserted branch is separated from the 
 new or present channel of the Thames, by a tertiary outlier 
 composed of London clay. The depth of the old branch, or 
 the thickness of fluviatile strata with which it has been filled 
 up, is seventy-five feet. The actual channel in the neigh 
 bourhood is now sixty feet deep, but there is probably ten or 
 fifteen feet of stratified sand and gravel at the bottom ; so that, 
 should the river deviate again from its course, its present bed 
 might be the receptacle of a fluvio-marine formation seventy- 
 five feet thick, equal to the former one of Shoeburyness, and 
 more considerable than that of Abbeville. It would consist both 
 of freshwater and marine strata, as the salt water is carried by 
 the tide far up above Sheerness ; but in order that such de- 
 
 * Principles of Geology. 
 K 
 
130 RELATIVE AGES OF HIGH AND LOW GRAVELS. CHAP. nil. 
 
 posits should resemble, in geological position, the Menche- 
 court beds, they must be raised ten or fifteen feet above their 
 present level, and be partially eroded. Such erosion they 
 would not fail to suffer during,the process of upheaval, because 
 the Thames would scour out its bed, and not alter its position 
 relatively to the sea, while the land was gradually rising. 
 
 Before the canal was made at Abbeville, the tide was per 
 ceptible in the Somme for some distance above that city. It 
 would only require, therefore, a slight subsidence to allow the 
 saltwater to reach Menchecourt, as it did in the post- pliocene 
 period. As a stratum containing exclusively land and fresh 
 water shells usually underlies the fluvio-marine sands at 
 Menchecourt, it seems that the river first prevailed there, after 
 which the land subsided ; and then there was an upheaval 
 which raised the country to a greater height than that at 
 which it now stands, after which there was a second sinking, 
 indicated by the position of the peat, as already explained 
 (p. 111). All these changes happened since man first in 
 habited this region. 
 
 At several places in the environs of Abbeville there are 
 nuviatile deposits at a higher level by fifty feet than those 
 of Menchecourt, resting in like manner on the chalk. One 
 of these occurs in the suburbs of the city at Moulin Quignon, 
 one hundred feet above the Somme and on the same side of 
 the valley as Menchecourt, and containing flint implements 
 of the same antique type and the bones of elephants ; but no 
 marine shells have been found there, nor in any gravel or 
 sand at higher elevations than the Menchecourt marine shells. 
 It has been a matter of discussion among geologists whether 
 the higher or the lower sands and gravels of the Somme valley 
 are the more ancient. As a general rule, when there are 
 alluvial formations of different ages in the same valley, those 
 which occupy a more elevated position above the river plain are 
 the oldest. In Auvergne and Velay, in Central France, where 
 
CHAP. VIII. FLINT IMPLEMENTS IN GRAVEL NEAR AMIENS. 131 
 
 the bones of fossil quadrupeds occur at all heights above the 
 present rivers from ten to one thousand feet, we observe the 
 terrestrial fauna to depart in character from that now living 
 in proportion as we ascend to higher terraces and platforms. 
 We pass from the lower alluvium, containing the mammoth, 
 tichorhine rhinoceros, and reindeer, to various older groups of 
 fossils, till, on a table-land a thousand feet high (near Le Puy, 
 for example), the abrupt termination of which overlooks the 
 present valley, we discover an old extinct river-bed covered 
 by a current of ancient lava, showing where the lowest level 
 was once situated. In that elevated alluvium the remains of 
 a tertiary mastodon and other quadrupeds of like antiquity 
 are embedded. 
 
 If the Menchecourt beds had been first formed, and the 
 valley, after being nearly as deep and wide as it is now, had 
 subsided, the sea must have advanced inland, causing small 
 delta-like accumulations at successive heights, wherever the 
 main river and its tributaries met the sea. Such a movement, 
 especially if it were intermittent, and interrupted occasionally 
 by long pauses, would very well account for the accumulation 
 of stratified debris which we encounter at certain points in 
 the valley, especially around Abbeville and Amiens. But we 
 are precluded from adopting this theory by the entire absence 
 of marine shells, and the presence of fresh-water and land 
 species, and mammalian bones, in considerable abundance, in 
 the drift both of higher and lower levels above Abbeville. 
 Had there been a total absence of all organic remains, we 
 might have imagined the former presence of the sea, and the 
 destruction of such remains might have been ascribed to 
 carbonic acid or other decomposing causes; but the post- 
 pliocene and implement-bearing strata can be shown by 
 their fossils to be of fluviatile origin. 
 
 K 2 
 
132 SECTION OF ALLUVIUM OF ST. ACHEUL. CHAr. vin. 
 
 Flint Implements in Gravel near Amiens. 
 Gravel of St. Acheul. 
 
 When we ascend the valley of the Somme, from Abbeville 
 to Amiens, a distance of about twenty-five miles, we observe 
 a repetition of all the same alluvial phenomena which we 
 have seen exhibited at Menchecourt and its neighbourhood, 
 with the single exception of the absence of marine shells and of 
 Cyrena fluminalis. We find lower-level gravel, such as No. 2, 
 fig. 7, p. 106, and higher-level alluvium, such as No. 3, the 
 latter rising to one hundred feet above the plain, which at 
 Amiens is about fifty feet above the level of the river at 
 Abbeville. In both the upper and lower gravels, as Dr. Ei- 
 gollot stated in 1854, flint tools and the bones of extinct 
 animals, together with river shells and land shells of living 
 species, abound. 
 
 Immediately below Amiens, a great mass of stratified gravel, 
 slightly elevated above the alluvial plain of the Somme, is 
 seen at St. Roch, and half a mile farther down the valley at 
 Montiers. Between these two places, a small tributary stream, 
 called the Celle, joins the Somme. In the gravel at Montiers, 
 Mr. Prestwich and I found some flint knives, one of them flat 
 on one side, but the other carefully worked, and exhibi 
 ting many fractures, clearly produced by blows skilfully 
 applied. Some of these knives were taken from so low a level 
 as to satisfy us that this great bed of gravel at Montiers, as 
 well as that of the contiguous quarries of St. Roch, which 
 seems 'to be a continuation of the same deposit, may be 
 referred to the human period. Dr. Eigollot had already 
 mentioned flint hatchets as obtained by him from St. Koch, 
 but as none have been found there of late years, his statement 
 was thought to require confirmation. The discovery, therefore, 
 of these flint knives in gravel of the same age was interesting, 
 
CHAP. VIII. FOSSIL MOLAR TEETH OF ELEPHANTS. 
 
 Fig. 18 
 
 133 
 
 Elcpkas primigenius. 
 
 Penultimate molar, lower jaw, right side, one-third of natural size, Post-pliocene. 
 Coexisted with man. 
 
 Fig, 19 
 
 Elcphas antiquus Falconer. 
 
 Penultimate molar, lower jaw, right side, size one-third of nature, Post-pliocene 
 and Newer pliocene. Coexisted with man. 
 
 Fig. 20 * 
 
 Elcphas meridionalis Nesti. 
 
 Penultimate molar, lower jaw, right side, size one-third of original, Newer plio 
 cene, Saint Prest, near Chartres, and Norwich Crag. Not yet proved to have 
 coexisted with man. 
 
 * For fig. 20, I am indebted to 
 M.Lartet^ and fig. 18 will be found in 
 his paper in Bulletin de laSociete Geo- 
 
 logique de France, Mars 1859. Fig. 19 
 is from Fauna Sivalensis, Falconer 
 and Cautley. 
 
134 SECTION OF GRAVEL AT ST. ACHEUL. CHAP. vin. 
 
 especially as many tusks of a hippopotamus have been ob 
 tained from the gravel of St. Roch some of these recently by 
 Mr. Prestwich ; while M. Gamier of Amiens has procured a 
 fine elephant's molar from the same pits, which Dr. Falconer 
 refers to Mephas antiquus, see fig. 19, p. 133. Hence I 
 infer that both these animals co-existed with man. 
 
 The alluvial formations of Montiers are very instructive in 
 another point of view. If, leaving the lower gravel of that 
 place, which is topped with loam or brick-earth (of which 
 the upper portion is about thirty feet above the level of the 
 Somme), we ascend the chalky slope to the height of about 
 eighty feet, another deposit of gravel and sand, with fluviatile 
 shells in a perfect condition, occurs, indicating most clearly 
 an ancient river-bed, the waters of which^ran habitually at 
 that higher level before the valley had been scooped out to 
 its present depth. This superior deposit is on the same side 
 of the Somme, and about as high, as the lowest part of the 
 celebrated formation of St. Acheul, two or three miles distant, 
 to which I shall now allude. 
 
 The terrace of St. Acheul may be described as a gently 
 sloping ledge of chalk, covered with gravel, topped as usual 
 with loam or fine sediment, the surface of the loam being 
 100 feet above the Somme, and about 150 above the sea. 
 
 Many stone coffins of the Gallo-Roman period have been 
 dug out of the upper portion of this alluvial mass. The 
 trenches made for burying them sometimes penetrate to the 
 depth of eight or nine feet from the surface, entering the 
 upper part of No. 3 of the sections Nos. 21 and 21 A. They 
 prove that when the Romans were in Gaul they found this 
 terrace in the same condition as it is now, or rather as it 
 was before the removal of so much gravel, sand, clay, and 
 loam, for repairing roads, and for making bricks and pottery. 
 
 In the annexed section, which I observed during my last visit 
 in 1860, it will be seen that a fragment of an elephant's tooth 
 
CHAP. VIIT. 
 
 SECTION OF GRAVEL AT ST. ACHETJL. 
 
 135 
 
 is noticed as having been dug out of unstratified sandy loam 
 at the point a, eleven feet from the surface. This was found 
 at the time of my visit ; and at a lower point, at b, eighteen 
 
 Fig. 21 
 
 Section of a gravel pit containing flint implements at St. Acheul, near 
 Amiens, observed in July 1860. 
 
 1 Vegetable soil and made ground, two to three feet thick. 
 
 2 Brown loam with some angular flints, in parts passing into ochreous 
 
 gravel, filling up indentations on the surface of No. 3, three 
 feet thick. 
 
 3 White siliceous sand with layers of chalky marl, and included 
 
 fragments of chalk, for the most part unstratified, nine feet. 
 
 4 Flint-gravel, and whitish chalky sand, flints subangular, average 
 
 size of fragments, three inches diameter, but with some large 
 unbroken chalk flints intermixed, cross stratification in parts. 
 Bones of mammalia, grinder of elephant at b, and flint implement 
 at c, ten to fourteen feet. 
 
 5 Chalk with flints. 
 
 a Part of elephant's molar, eleven feet from the surface. 
 
 b Entire molar of E. primigenius, seventeen feet from surface. 
 
 c Position of flint hatchet, eighteen feet from surface. 
 
 feet from the surface, a large nearly entire and unrolled mo 
 lar of the same species was obtained, which is now in my pos 
 session. It has been pronounced by Dr. Falconer to belong 
 to Elephas primigenius. 
 
136 SANDSTONE BLOCKS IN GRAVEL OF SOMME. CHAP. vm. 
 
 A stone hatchet of an oval form, like that represented at 
 fig. 9, p. 115, was discovered at the same time, about one foot 
 lower down, at c, in densely compressed gravel. The surface 
 of the fundamental chalk is uneven in this pit, and slopes 
 towards the .valley-plain of the Somme. In a horizontal 
 distance of twenty feet, I found a difference in vertical height 
 of seven feet. In the chalky sand, sometimes occurring in 
 interstices between the separate fragments of flint, constituting 
 the coarse gravel No. 4, entire as well as broken fresh-water 
 shells are often met with. To some it may appear enigmatical 
 how such fragile objects could have escaped annihilation in a 
 river-bed, when flint tools and much gravel were shoved 
 along the bottom ; but I have seen the dredging instrument 
 employed in the Thames, above and below London Bridge, 
 to deepen the river, and worked by steam power, scoop up 
 gravel and sand from the bottom, and then pour the contents 
 pell-mell into the boat, and still many specimens of Limnea, 
 Planorbis, Paludina, Cyclas, and other shells might be taken 
 out uninjured from the gravel. 
 
 It will be observed that the gravel No. 4 is obliquely stra 
 tified, and that its surface had undergone denudation before the 
 white sandy loam, No. 3, was superimposed. The materials 
 of the gravel at d must have been cemented or frozen together 
 into a somewhat coherent mass to allow the projecting ridge, 
 dy to stand up five feet above the general surface, the 
 sides being in some places perpendicular. In No. 3 we 
 probably behold an example of a passage from river-silt to 
 inundation mud, or loess. In some parts of it, land shells 
 occur. 
 
 It has been ascertained by MM. Buteux, Ravin, and other 
 observers conversant with the geology of this part of France, 
 that in none of the alluvial deposits, ancient or modern, are 
 there any fragments of rocks foreign to the basin of the 
 Somme no erratics which could only be explained by sup- 
 
CHAP. vm. FOSSIL MAMMALIA IN DRIFT OF THE SOMME. 137 
 
 posing them to have been brought by ice, during a general 
 submergence of the country, from some other hydrographical 
 basin. 
 
 But in some of the pits at St. Acheul there are seen in 
 the beds No. 4, fig. 21, not only well-rounded tertiary pebbles, 
 but great blocks of hard sandstone, of the kind called in the 
 south of England ( greyweathers,' some of which are three 
 or four feet and upwards in diameter. They are usually 
 angular, and when spherical owe their shape generally to 
 an original concretionary structure, and not to trituration 
 in a river's bed. These large fragments of stone abound 
 both in the higher and lower level gravels round Amiens and 
 at the higher level at Abbeville. They have also been 
 traced far up the valley above Amiens, wherever patches of 
 the old alluvium occur. They have all been derived from 
 the tertiary strata which once covered the chalk. Their 
 dimensions are such that it is impossible to imagine a 
 river like the present Somme, flowing through a flat 
 country, with a gentle fall towards the sea, to have carried 
 them for miles down its channel, unless ice cooperated 
 as a transporting power. Their angularity also favours the 
 supposition of their having been floated by ice, or rendered 
 so buoyant by it as to have escaped much of the wear and 
 tear which blocks propelled along the bottom of a river 
 channel would otherwise suffer. We must remember that the 
 present mildness of the winters in Picardy and the north-west 
 of Europe generally is exceptional in the northern hemisphere, 
 and that large fragments of granite, sandstone, and limestone 
 are now carried annually by ice down the Canadian rivers in 
 latitudes farther south than Paris. * 
 
 Another sign of ice agency observed by me in many pits at 
 St. Acheul, and of which Mr. Prestwich has given a good 
 
 * Principles of Geology, 9th ed. p. 220. 
 
138 
 
 CONTORTED STRATA AT ST. ACHEUL. 
 
 CHAP. VIII. 
 
 illustration in one of his published sections, deserves notice. 
 It consists in flexures and contortions of the strata of sand, 
 
 Fig. 21 A 
 
 Contorted fluviatile strata at St. Acheul (Prestwich, Phil. Trans. 1861, p. 299). 
 
 1 Surface soil. 
 
 2 Brown loam as in fig. 21, p. 135, thickness, six feet. 
 
 3 "White sand with bent and folded layers of marl thickness, six feet. 
 
 4 Gravel, as in fig. 21, p. 135 with bones of mammalia and flint im 
 
 plements. 
 
 A Graves filled with made ground and human bones. 
 
 b and c Seams of laminated marl often bent round upon themselves. 
 
 d Beds of gravel with sharp curves. 
 
 marl, and gravel (as seen at b, c and d, fig. 21 A), which 
 they have evidently undergone since their original deposition, 
 and from which both the underlying chalk and part of the 
 overlying beds of sand No. 3 are usually exempt. 
 
 In my former writings I have attributed this kind of 
 derangement to two causes ; first, the pressure of ice running 
 aground on yielding banks of mud and sand ; and, secondly, 
 the melting of masses of ice and snow of unequal thickness, 
 on which horizontal layers of mud, sand, and other fine and 
 coarse materials had accumulated. The late Mr. Trimmer 
 first pointed out in what manner the unequal failure of sup 
 port caused by the liquefaction of underlying or intercalated 
 snow and ice might give rise to such complicated foldings.* 
 
 * See Chapter XII. 
 
CHAP. VIII. ICE-ACTION IN THE BEDS OF RIVEKS. 139 
 
 When 6 ice-jams' occur on the St. Lawrence and other 
 Canadian rivers (lat. 46 N.), the sheets of ice, which become 
 packed or forced under or over one another, assume in most 
 cases a highly inclined and sometimes even a vertical position. 
 They are often observed to be coated on one side with mud, 
 sand, or gravel frozen on to them, derived from shallows in 
 the river on which they rested when congelation first reached 
 the bottom. 
 
 As often as portions of these packs melt near the margin 
 of the river, the layers of mud, sand, and gravel, which result 
 from their liquefaction, cannot fail to assume a very abnormal 
 arrangement, very perplexing to a geologist who should 
 undertake to interpret them without having the ice-clue in 
 his mind. 
 
 Mr. Prestwich has suggested that ground-ice may have had 
 its influence in modifying the ancient alluvium of the 
 Somme.* It is certain that ice in this form plays an active 
 part every winter in giving motion to stones and gravel in 
 the beds of rivers in European Russia and Siberia. It appears 
 that when in those countries the streams are reduced nearly to 
 tne freezing point, congelation begins frequently at the 
 bottom ; the reason being, according to Arago, that the current 
 is slowest there, and the gravel and large stones, having paxted 
 with much of their heat by radiation, acquire a temperature 
 below the average of the main body of the river. It is, 
 therefore, when the water is clear, and the sky free from 
 clouds, that ground ice forms most readily, and oftener on 
 pebbly than on muddy bottoms. Fragments of such ice, 
 rising occasionally to the surface, bring up with them gravel, 
 and even large stones. 
 
 Without dwelling longer on the various ways in which ice 
 may affect the forms of stratification in drift, so as to 
 cause bendings and foldings in which the underlying or over- 
 * Prestwich, Memoir read to Royal Society, April 1862. 
 
140 PROBABLE CAUSES OF ACCUMULATION CHAP. vm. 
 
 lying strata do not participate, a subject to which I shall have 
 occasion again to allude in the sequel, I will state in this 
 place that such contortions, whether explicable or not, are 
 very characteristic of glacial formations. They have also no 
 necessary connection with the transportation of large blocks 
 of stone, and they therefore afford, as Mr. Prestwich remarks, 
 independent proof of ice-action in the post-pliocene gravel of 
 the Somme. 
 
 Let us, then, suppose that, at the time when flint hatchets 
 were embedded in great numbers in the ancient gravel which 
 now forms the terrace of St. Acheul, the main river and its 
 tributaries were annually frozen over for several months in 
 winter. In that case, the primitive people may, as Mr. 
 Prestwich hints, have resembled in their mode of life those 
 American Indians who now inhabit the country between 
 Hudson's Bay and the Polar Sea. The habits of those Indians 
 have been well described by Hearne, who spent some years 
 among them. As often as deer and other game become 
 scarce on the land, they betake themselves to fishing in the 
 rivers ; and for this purpose, and also to obtain water for 
 drinking, they are in the constant practice of cutting round 
 holes in the ice, a foot or more in diameter, through which 
 they throw baited hooks or nets. Often they pitch their tent 
 on the ice, and then cut such holes through it, using ice- 
 chisels of metal when they can get copper or iron, but when 
 not, employing tools of flint or hornstone. 
 
 The great accumulation of gravel at St. Acheul has taken 
 place in part of the valley where the tributary streams, 
 the Noye and the Arve, now join the Somme. These tribu 
 taries,, as well as the main river, must have been running at 
 the height first of a hundred feet, and afterwards at various 
 lower levels above the present valley-plain, in those earlier 
 times when the flint tools of the antique type were buried 
 in successive river beds. I have said at various levels, be- 
 
CHAP. vni. OF FLINT IMPLEMENTS IN ANCIENT GRAVEL. 141 
 
 cause there are, here and there, patches of drift at heights 
 intermediate between the higher and lower gravel, and also 
 some deposits, showing that the river once flowed at elevations 
 above as well as below the level of the platform of St. Aoheul. 
 As yet, however, no patch of gravel skirting the valley at 
 heights exceeding one hundred feet above the Somme have 
 yielded flint tools or other signs of the former sojourn of 
 man in this region. 
 
 Possibly, in the earlier geographical condition of this 
 country, the confluence of tributaries with the Somme afforded 
 inducements to a hunting and fishing tribe to settle there, 
 and some of the same natural advantages may have caused 
 the first inhabitants of Amiens and Abbeville to fix on the 
 same sites for their dwellings. If the early hunting and 
 fishing tribes frequented the same spots for hundreds or 
 thousands of years in succession, the number of the stone 
 implements lost in the bed of the river need not surprise us. 
 Ice-chisels, flint hatchets, and spear -heads may have slipped 
 accidentally through holes kept constantly open, and the 
 recovery of a lost treasure once sunk in the bed of the ice 
 bound stream, inevitably swept away with gravel on the 
 breaking up of the ice in the spring, would be hopeless. 
 During a long winter, in a country affording abundance of 
 flint, the manufacture of tools would be continually in pro 
 gress ; and, if so, thousands of chips and flakes would be pur 
 posely thrown into the ice-hole, besides a great number of 
 implements having flaws, or rejected as too unskilfully made 
 to be worth preserving. 
 
 As to the fossil fauna of the drift, considered in relation to 
 the climate, when I took a collection which I had made of all the 
 more common species of land and freshwater shells from the 
 Amiens and Abbeville drift, to my friend M. Deshayes at Paris, 
 he declared them to be, without exception, the same as those 
 now living in the basin of the Seine. This fact may seem at first 
 
142 CLIMATE OF THE LOWER GRAVELS. CHAP. vm. 
 
 sight to imply that the climate had not altered since the flint 
 tools were fabricated ; but it appears that all these species of 
 mollusks now range as far north as Norway and Finland, and 
 may therefore have flourished in the valley of the Somme 
 when the river was frozen over annually in winter. 
 
 In regard to the accompanying mammalia, some of them, 
 like the mammoth and tichorhine rhinoceros, may have 
 been able to endure the rigours of a northern winter as well 
 as the rein-deer, which we find fossil in the same gravel, it 
 is a more difficult point to determine whether the climate of 
 the lower gravels (those of Menchecourt, for example) was 
 more genial than that of the higher ones. Mr. Prestwich 
 inclines to this opinion. None of those contortions of the 
 strata above described (p. 138) have as yet been observed in 
 the lower drift. It contains large blocks of tertiary sandstone 
 and grit, which may have required the aid of ice to convey 
 them to their present sites; but as such blocks already 
 abounded in the older and higher alluvium, they may simply 
 be monuments of its destruction, having been let down suc 
 cessively to lower and lower levels without making much 
 seaward progress. 
 
 The Cyrena fluminalis of Menchecourt and the hippo 
 potamus of St. Eoch seem to be in favour of a less severe 
 temperature in winter ; but so many of the species of 
 mammalia, as well as of the land and fresh-water shells, are 
 common to both formations, and our information respecting 
 the entire fauna is still so imperfect, that it would be prema 
 ture to pretend to settle this question in the present state of 
 our knowledge. We must be content with the conclusion 
 (and it is one of no small interest), that when man first 
 inhabited this part of Europe, at the time that the St. Acheul 
 drift was formed, the climate as well as the physical geography 
 of the country differed considerably from the state of things 
 now established there. 
 
CHAP. vm. CAUSES OF EXTINCTION OF MAMMALIA. 143 
 
 Among the elephant remains from St. Acheul, in M 
 Grarnier's collection, Dr. Falconer recognised a molar of the 
 Elephas antiquus, fig. 19, the same species which has been 
 already mentioned as having been found in the lower-level 
 gravels of St. Koch. This species, therefore, endured while 
 important changes took place in the geographical condition 
 of the valley of the Somme. Assuming the lower-level 
 gravel to be the newer, it follows that the Elephas antiquus 
 and the hippopotamus of St. Eoch continued to flourish long 
 after the introduction of the mammoth, a well characterized 
 tooth of which, as I before stated, was found at St. Acheul at 
 the time of my visit in 1860. 
 
 As flint hatchets and knives have been discovered in the 
 alluvial deposits both at high and low levels, we may safely 
 affirm that man was as old an inhabitant of this region 
 as were any of the fossil quadrupeds above enumerated, a 
 conclusion which is independent of any difference of opinion 
 as to the relative age of the higher and lower gravels. 
 
 The disappearance of many large pachyderms and beasts of 
 prey from Europe has often been attributed to the inter 
 vention of man, and no doubt he played his part in hastening 
 the era of their extinction ; but there is good reason for sus 
 pecting that other causes cooperated to the same end. No 
 naturalist would for a moment suppose that the extermination 
 of the Cyrena fluminalis throughout the whole of Europe 
 a species which coexisted with our race in the valley of the 
 Somme, and which was very abundant in the waters of the 
 Thames at the time when the elephant, rhinoceros, and 
 hippopotamus flourished on its banks was accelerated by 
 human agency. The same modification in climate and other 
 conditions of existence which affected this aquatic mollusk, 
 may have mainly contributed to the gradual dying out of 
 many of the large mammalia. 
 
 We have already seen that the peat of the valley of the 
 
144 ABSENCE OF HUMAN BONES EXPLAINED. CHAP. vm. 
 
 Somme is a formation which, in all likelihood, took thousands 
 of years for its growth. But no change of a marked character 
 has occurred in the mammalian fauna since it began to ac 
 cumulate. The contrast of the fauna of the ancient alluvium, 
 whether at high or low levels, with the fauna of the oldest peat 
 is almost as great as its contrast with the existing fauna, the 
 memorials of man being common to the whole series ; hence 
 we may infer that the interval of time which separated the 
 era of the large extinct mammalia from that of the earliest 
 peat, was of far longer duration than that of the entire growth 
 of the peat. Yet we by no means need the evidence of the 
 ancient fossil fauna to establish the antiquity of man in this 
 part of France. The mere volume of the drift at various 
 heights would alone suffice to demonstrate a vast lapse of 
 time during which such heaps of shingle, derived both from 
 the Eocene and the cretaceous rocks, were thrown down 
 in a succession of river-channels. We observe thousands of 
 rounded and half-rounded flints, and a vast number of angular 
 ones, with rounded pieces of white chalk of various sizes, 
 testifying to a prodigious amount of mechanical action, 
 accompanying the repeated widening and deepening of the 
 valley, before it became the receptacle of peat ; and the po 
 sition of many of the flint tools leaves no doubt on the mind 
 of the geologist that their fabrication preceded all this 
 reiterated denudation. 
 
 On the Absence of Human Bones in the Alluvium of 
 the Somme. 
 
 It is naturally a matter of no small surprise that, after we 
 have collected many hundred flint implements (including 
 knives, many thousands), not a single human bone has yet 
 been met with in the alluvial sand and gravel of the Somme. 
 This dearth of the mortal remains of our species holds true 
 
CHAP. VIIT. ABSENCE OF HUMAN BONES EXPLAINED. 145 
 
 equally, as yet, in all other parts of Europe where the tool- 
 bearing drift of the post-pliocene period has been investigated 
 in valley deposits. Yet in these same formations there is no 
 want of bones of mammalia belonging to extinct and living 
 species. In the course of the last quarter of a century, 
 thousands of them have been submitted to the examination 
 of skilful osteologists, and they have been unable to detect 
 among them one fragment of a human skeleton, not even a 
 tooth. Yet Cuvier pointed out long ago, that the bones of 
 man found buried in ancient battle-fields were not more de 
 cayed than those of horses interred in the same graves. We 
 have seen that in the Liege caverns, the skulls, jaws, and teeth, 
 with other bones of the human race, were preserved in the 
 same condition as those of the cave-bear, tiger, and mammoth. 
 
 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. In 
 the mean time, the absence of all vestige of the bones which 
 belonged to that population by which so many weapons were 
 designed and executed, affords a most striking and instructive 
 lesson in regard to the value of negative evidence, when 
 adduced in proof of the non-existence of certain classes of 
 terrestrial animals at given periods of the past. It is a new 
 and emphatic illustration of the extreme imperfection of 
 the geological record, of which even they who are constantly 
 working in the field cannot easily form a just conception. 
 
 We must not forget that Dr. Schmerling, after finding 
 extinct mammalia and flint tools in forty-two Belgian 
 caverns, was only rewarded by the discovery of human bones 
 in three or four of those rich repositories of osseous remains. 
 In like manner, it was not till the year 1855 that the first 
 skull of the musk buffalo (Bubalus moschatus) was detected 
 in the fossiliferous gravel of the Thames, and not till 1860, 
 as will be seen in the next chapter, that the same quadruped 
 
 L 
 
146 ABSENCE OF HUMAN BONES EXPLAINED. CHAP. vm. 
 
 was proved to have co-existed in France with the mammoth. 
 The same theory which will explain the comparative rarity 
 of such species would no doubt account for the still greater 
 scarcity of human bones, as well as for our general ignorance 
 of the post-pliocene terrestrial fauna, with the exception of 
 that part of it which is revealed to us by cavern researches. 
 
 In valley drift we meet commonly with the bones of quad 
 rupeds which graze on plains bordering rivers. Carnivorous 
 beasts, attracted to the same ground in search of their prey, 
 sometimes leave their remains in the same deposits, but more 
 rarely. The whole assemblage of fossil quadrupeds at present 
 obtained from the alluvium of Picardy is obviously a mere 
 fraction of the entire fauna which flourished contemporane 
 ously with the primitive people by whom the flint hatchets 
 were made. 
 
 Instead of its being part of the plan of nature to store up 
 enduring records of a large number of the individual plants and 
 animals which have lived on the surface, it seems to be her 
 chief care to provide the means of disencumbering the habit 
 able areas lying above and below the waters of those myriads 
 of solid skeletons of animals, and those massive trunks of 
 trees, which would otherwise soon choke up every river, and 
 fill every valley. To prevent this inconvenience she employs 
 the heat and moisture of the sun and atmosphere, the dissolv 
 ing power of carbonic and other acids, the grinding teeth and 
 gastric juices of quadrupeds, birds, reptiles, and fish, and the 
 agency of many of the invertebrata. We are all familiar with 
 the efficacy of these and other causes on the land ; and as to the 
 bottoms of seas, we have only to read the published reports of 
 Mr. MacAndrew, the late Edward Forbes, and other experi 
 enced dredgers, who, while they failed utterly in drawing 
 up from the deep a single human bone, declared that they 
 scarcely ever met with a work of art even after counting tens 
 of thousands of shells and zoophytes, collected on a coast line 
 
CHAP. vin. HUMAN BONES NOT FOUND IN LAKE OF HAARLEM. 147 
 
 of several hundred miles in extent, where they often ap 
 proached within less than half a mile of a land peopled by 
 millions of human beings. 
 
 Lake of Haarlem. 
 
 It is not many years since the Government of Holland re 
 solved to lay dry that great sheet of water formerly called the 
 Lake of Haarlem, extending over 45,000 square acres. They 
 succeeded, in 1853, in turning it into dry land, by means 
 of powerful pumps constantly worked by steam, which raised 
 the water and discharged it into a canal running for twenty 
 or thirty miles round the newly-gained land. This land was 
 depressed thirteen feet beneath the mean level of the ocean. 
 I travelled, in 1859, over part of the bed of this old lake, 
 and found it already converted into arable land, and peopled 
 by an agricultural population of 5000 souls. Mr. Staring, 
 who had been for some years employed by the Dutch Grovern- 
 ment in constructing a geological map of Holland, was my 
 companion and guide. He informed me that he and his 
 associates had searched in vain for human bones in the de 
 posits which had constituted for three centuries the bed of 
 the great lake. 
 
 There had been many a shipwreck, and many a naval fight 
 in those waters, and hundreds of Dutch and Spanish soldiers 
 and sailors had met there with a watery grave. The popula 
 tion which lived on the borders of this ancient sheet of water 
 numbered between thirty and forty thousand souls. In dig 
 ging the great canal, a fine section had been laid open, about 
 thirty miles long, of the deposits which formed the ancient 
 bottom of the lake. Trenches, also, innumerable, several feet 
 deep, had been freshly dug on all the farms, and their united 
 length must have amounted to thousands of miles. In some 
 of the sandy soil recently thrown out of the trenches, I observed 
 
 L 2 
 
148 ABSENCE OF HUMAN BONES EXPLAINED. CHAP. vnr. 
 
 specimens of fresh-water and brackish -water shells, such as 
 Unio and Dreissena, of living species ; and in clay brought up 
 from below the sand, shells of Tellina, Lutraria, and Cardium, 
 all of species now inhabiting the adjoining sea. 
 
 One or two wrecked Spanish vessels, and arms of the same 
 period, have rewarded the antiquaries who had been watching 
 the draining operations in the hope of a richer harvest, and 
 who were not a little disappointed at the result. In a peaty 
 tract on the margin of one part of the lake a few coins were 
 dug up ; but if history had been silent, and if there had been 
 a controversy whether man was already a denizen of this 
 planet at the time when the area of the Haarlem lake was 
 under water, the archaeologist, in order to answer this ques 
 tion, must have appealed, as in the case of the valley of the 
 Somme, not to fossil bones, but to works of art embedded in 
 the superficial strata. 
 
 Mr. Staring, in his valuable memoir on the ( Geological Map 
 of Holland,' has attributed the general scarcity of human 
 bones in Dutch peat, notwithstanding the many works of art 
 preserved in it, to the power of the humic and sulphuric 
 acids to dissolve bones, the peat in question being plenti 
 fully impregnated with such acids. His theory may be cor 
 rect, but it is not applicable to the gravel of the Valley of 
 the Somme, in which the bones of fossil mammalia are fre 
 quent, nor to the uppermost fresh-water strata forming the 
 bottom of a large part of the Haarlem Lake, in which it is 
 not pretended that such acids occur. 
 
 The primitive inhabitants of the Valley of the Somme 
 may have been too wary and sagacious to be often surprised 
 and drowned by floods, which swept away many an incautious 
 elephant or rhinoceros, horse and ox. But even if those rude 
 hunters had cherished a superstitious veneration for the 
 Somme, and had regarded it as a sacred river (as the modern 
 Hindoos revere the Granges), and had been in the habit of 
 
CHAP. vni. SCARCITY OF HUMAN BONES. 149 
 
 committing the bodies of their dead or dying to its waters 
 even had such funeral rites prevailed, it by no means fpllows 
 that the bones of many individuals would have been preserved 
 to our time. 
 
 A corpse cast into the stream first sinks, and must then be 
 almost immediately overspread with sediment of a certain 
 weight, or it will rise again when distended with gases, and 
 float perhaps to the sea before it sinks again. It may then 
 be attacked by fish of marine species, some of which are 
 capable of digesting bones. If, before being carried into the 
 sea and devoured, it is enveloped with fluviatile mud and 
 sand, the next flood, if it lie in mid channel, may tear it out 
 again, scatter all the bones, roll some of them into pebbles, 
 and leave others exposed to destroying agencies ; and this may 
 be repeated annually, till all vestiges of the skeleton may 
 disappear. On the other hand, a bone washed through a rent 
 into a subterranean cavity, even though a rarer contingency, 
 may have a greater chance of escaping destruction, especially 
 if there be stalactite dropping from the roof of the cave or 
 walls of a rent, and if the cave be not constantly traversed 
 by too strong a current of engulfed water. 
 
150 FLINT IMPLEMENTS IN BASIN OF THE SEINE. CHAP. IX. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 WORKS OF AET IN POST-PLIOCENE ALLUVIUM OF FRANCE AND 
 
 ENGLAND. 
 
 FLINT IMPLEMENTS IN ANCIENT ALLUVIUM OF THE BASIN OF THE 
 
 SEINE BONES OF MAN AND OF EXTINCT MAMMALIA IN THE CAVE OF 
 
 ARCY EXTINCT MAMMALIA IN THE VALLEY OF THE OISE FLINT 
 
 IMPLEMENT IN GEAVEL OF SAME VALLEY WORKS OF ART IN POST- 
 PLIOCENE DRIFT IN VALLEY OF THE THAMES MUSK BUFFALO 
 
 MEETING OF NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN FAUNA MIGRATIONS OF 
 
 QUADRUPEDS MAMMALS OF AMOOR LAND CHRONOLOGICAL RELA 
 TION OF THE OLDER ALLUVIUM OF THE THAMES TO THE GLACIAL 
 DRIFT FLINT IMPLEMENTS OF POST-PLIOCENE PERIOD IN SURREY, 
 MIDDLESEX, KENT, BEDFORDSHIRE, AND SUFFOLK. 
 
 Flint Implements in Post-pliocene Alluvium in the Basin 
 of the Seine. 
 
 IN the ancient alluvium of the valleys of the Seine and its 
 principal tributaries, the same assemblage of fossil animals, 
 which has been alluded to in the last chapter as character 
 ising the gravel of Picardy, has long been known ; but it was 
 not till the year 1860, and when diligent search had been 
 expressly made for them, that flint implements of the Amiens 
 type were discovered in this part of France. 
 
 In the neighbourhood of Paris, deposits of drift occur 
 answering both to those of the higher and lower levels of the 
 basin of the Somme before described.* In both are found, 
 mingled with the wreck of the tertiary and cretaceous rocks 
 of the vicinity, a large quantity of granitic sand, and pebbles, 
 and occasionally large blocks of granite, from a few inches 
 
 * Prestwich, Proceedings of Boy. Soc. 1862. 
 
CHAP. IX. BASIN OF THE SEINE. 151 
 
 to a foot or more in diameter. These blocks are peculiarly 
 abundant in the lower drift commonly called the ' diluvium 
 The granitic materials are traceable to a chain of hills 
 called the Morvan, where the head waters of the Yonne take 
 their rise, 150 miles to the SSE. of Paris. 
 
 It was in this lowest gravel that M. H. T. Grosse, of Geneva, 
 found, in April 1860, in the suburbs of Paris, at La Motte 
 Piquet, on the left bank of the Seine, one or two well- 
 formed flint implements of the Amiens type, accompanied 
 by a great number of ruder tools or attempts at tools. I 
 visited the spot in 1861 with M. Hebert, and saw the stratum 
 from which the worked flints had been extracted, twenty feet 
 below the surface, and near the bottom of the 'grey dilu 
 vium,' a bed of gravel from which I have myself, in and 
 near Paris, frequently collected the bones of the elephant, 
 horse, and other mammalia. 
 
 More recently, M. Lartet has discovered at Clichy, in the 
 environs of Paris, in the same lower gravel, a well-shaped 
 flint implement of the Amiens type, together with remains 
 both of Elephas primigenius and E. antiquus. No tools 
 have yet been met with in any of the gravel occurring at the 
 higher levels of the valley of the Seine ; but no importance 
 can be attached to this negative fact, as so little search has 
 yet been made for them. 
 
 Mr. Prestwich has observed contortions indicative of ice- 
 action, of the same kind as those near Amiens (see p. 138), 
 in the higher level drift at Charonne, near Paris ; but as yet 
 no similar derangement has been seen in the lower gravels a 
 fact, so far as it goes, in unison with the phenomena observed 
 in Picardy. 
 
 In the cavern of Arcy-sur- Yonne a series of deposits have 
 lately been investigated by the Marquis de Vibraye, who 
 discovered human bones in the lowest of them, mixed with 
 remains of quadrupeds of extinct and recent species. This 
 
152 BONES IN THE CAVE OF ARCY. CHAP. ix. 
 
 cavern occurs in Jurassic limestone, at a slight elevation 
 above the Cure, a small tributary of the Yonne, which last 
 joins the Seine near Fontainebleau, about forty miles south 
 of Paris. The lowest formation in the cavern resembles the 
 ( diluvium gris ' of Paris, being composed of granitic ma 
 terials, and like it derived chiefly from the waste of the 
 crystalline rocks of the Morvan. In it have been found the 
 two branches of a human lower jaw with teeth well-pre 
 served, and the bones of the Elephas prim.igenius, Rhinoceros 
 tichorhinus, Ursus spelceus, Hycena spelcea, and Cervus 
 Tarandus, all specifically determined by M. Lartet. I have 
 been shown this collection of fossils by M. de Vibraye, and 
 remarked that the human and other remains were in the 
 same condition and of the same colour. 
 
 Above the grey gravel is a bed of red alluvium, made up 
 of fragments of Jura limestone, in a red argillaceous matrix, 
 in which were embedded several flint knives, with bones of 
 the reindeer and horse, but no extinct mammalia. Over 
 this, in a higher bed of alluvium, were several polished 
 hatchets of the more modern type called f celts,' and above all 
 loam or cave-mud, in which were Grallo-Eoman antiquities.* 
 
 The French geologists have made as yet too little progress 
 in identifying the age of the successive deposits of ancient 
 alluvium of various parts of the basin of the Seine, to enable 
 us to speculate with confidence as to the coincidence in date 
 of the granitic gravel with human bones of the Grrotte d'Arcy 
 and the stone- hatchets buried in ' grey diluvium ' of La Motte 
 Piquet, before mentioned ; but as the associated extinct mam 
 malia are of the same species in both localities, I feel strongly 
 inclined to believe that the stone hatchets found by M. Grosse 
 at Paris, and the human bones discovered by M. de Vibraye, 
 may be referable to the same period. 
 
 * Bulletin de la Societe Greologique de France, 1860. 
 
CHAP. IX. EXTINCT MAMMALIA IN VALLEY OF THE OISE. 153 
 
 Valley of the Oise. 
 
 A flint hatchet, of the old Abbeville and Amiens type, was 
 found lately by M. Peigne Delacourt at Precy near Criel, on 
 the Oise, in gravel, resembling, in its geological position, the 
 lower-level gravels of Montiers near Arniens, already de 
 scribed. I visited these extensive gravel-pits in 1861, in 
 company with Mr. Prestwich; but we remained there too 
 short a time to entitle us to expect to find a flint implement, 
 even if they had been as abundant as at St. Acheul. 
 
 In 1859, I examined, in a higher part of the same valley 
 of the Oise, near Chauny and Noyon, some fine railway 
 cuttings, which passed continuously through alluvium of the 
 post-pliocene period for half a mile. All this alluvium was 
 evidently of fluviatile origin, for, in the interstices between 
 the pebbles, the Ancylus fluviatilis and other freshwater 
 shells were abundant. My companion, the Abbe E. Lam 
 bert, had collected from the gravel a great many fossil bones, 
 among which M. Lartet has recognised both Elephas primi- 
 genius and E. antiquus, besides a species of hippopotamus 
 (H. major ?), also the rein-deer, horse, a.nd the musk buffalo 
 (Bubalus moschatus). The latter seems never to have been 
 seen before in the old alluvium of France.* Over the 
 gravel above mentioned, near Chauny, are seen dense masses 
 of loam like the loess of the Rhine, containing shells of the 
 genera Helix and Succinea. We may suppose that the gravel 
 containing the flint hatchet at Precy is of the same age as 
 that of Chauny, with which it is continuous, and that both of 
 them are coeval with the tool-bearing beds of Amiens, for the 
 basins of the Oise and the Somme are only separated by a 
 narrow water-shed, and the same fossil quadrupeds occur in 
 both. 
 
 * Lartet, Annales des Sciences Naturelles Zoologiques, torn. xv. p. 224. 
 
154 POST-PLIOCENE ALLUYIUM OF ENGLAND. CHAP. IX. 
 
 The alluvium of the Seine and its tributaries, like that of 
 the Somme, contains no fragments of rocks brought from any 
 other hydrographical basin; yet the shape of the land, or 
 fall- of the river, or the climate, or all these conditions, must 
 have been very different when the grey alluvium in which 
 the flint tools occur at Paris was formed. The great size of 
 some of the blocks of granite, and the distance which they 
 have travelled, imply a power in the river which it no longer 
 possesses. We can scarcely doubt that river-ice once played 
 a much more active part than now in the transportation of 
 such blocks, one of which may be seen in the Museum of the 
 Ecole des Mines at Paris, three or four feet in diameter. 
 
 Post-pliocene Alluvium of England, containing Works 
 
 of Art. 
 
 In the ancient alluvium of the basin of the Thames, at 
 moderate heights above the main river, and its tributaries, 
 we find fossil bones of the same species of extinct and living 
 mammalia, accompanied by recent species, of land and fresh 
 water shells, as we have shown to be characteristic of the 
 basins of the Somme and the Seine. We can scarcely therefore 
 doubt that these quadrupeds, during some part of the post- 
 pliocene period, ranged freely from the continent of Europe 
 to England, at a time when there was an uninterrupted 
 communication by land between the two countries. The 
 reader will not therefore be surprised to learn that flint 
 implements of the same antique type as those of the valley 
 of the Somme have been detected in British alluvium. 
 
 The most marked feature of this alluvium in the Thames 
 valley is that great bed of ochreous gravel, composed chiefly 
 of broken and slightly worn chalk flints, on which a great 
 part of London is built. It extends from above Maidenhead 
 through the metropolis to the sea, a distance from west to east 
 
CHAP. ix. POST-PLIOCENE ALLUVIUM OF ENGLAND. 155 
 
 of fifty miles, having a width varying from two to nine miles. 
 Its thickness ranges commonly from five to fifteen feet.* In- 
 terstratified with this gravel, in many places, are beds of sand, 
 loam, and clay, the whole containing occasionally remains of 
 the mammoth and other extinct quadrupeds. Fine sections 
 have been exposed to view, at different periods, at Brentford 
 and Kew Bridge, others in London itself, and below it at 
 Ilford and Erith in Kent, on the right bank, and at Gray's 
 Thurrock in Essex, on the left bank. The united thickness 
 of the beds of sand, gravel, and loam amounts sometimes to 
 forty or even sixty feet. They are for the most part elevated 
 above, but in some cases they descend below, the present level 
 of the overflowed plain of the Thames. 
 
 If the reader will refer to the section of the post-pliocene 
 sands and gravels of Menchecourt, near Abbeville, given at 
 p. 118, he will perfectly understand the relations of the ancient 
 Thames alluvium to the modern channel and plain of the 
 river, and their relation, on the other hand, to the boundary 
 formations of older date, whether tertiary or cretaceous. 
 
 So far as they are known, the fossil mollusca and mammalia 
 of the two districts also agree very closely, the Cyrenaflumi- 
 nalis being common to both, and being the only extra-Euro 
 pean shell, this and all the species of testacea being recent. Of 
 this agreement with the living fauna there is a fine illustra 
 tion in Essex ; for the determination of which we are indebted 
 to the late Mr. John Brown, F.Gr.S., who collected at Cop- 
 ford, in Essex, from a deposit containing bones of the mam 
 moth, a large bear (probably Ursus spelceus), a beaver, stag, 
 and aurochs, no less than sixty-nine species of land and 
 fresh-water shells. Forty-eight of these were terrestrial, and 
 two of them, Helix incarnata and H. ruderata, no longer in 
 habit the British Isles, but are still living on the continent, 
 
 * Prestwich, Geological Quarterly Journal, vol. xii. p. 131. 
 
156 MEETING OF NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN FAUNA. CFAP. IX. 
 
 the first in high northern latitudes.* The Cyrena flumi- 
 nalis and the Unio littoralis, to which last I shall presently 
 allude, were not among the number. 
 
 I long ago suggested the hypothesis, that in the basin of 
 the Thames there are indications of a meeting in the post- 
 pliocene period of a northern and southern fauna. To the 
 northern group may have belonged the mammoth (Elepkas 
 primigenius) and the Rhinoceros tichorhinus, both of which 
 Pallas found in Siberia, preserved with their flesh in the ice. 
 With these are occasionally associated the rein-deer. In 1855 
 the skull of the musk-ox (Bubalus moschatus) was also found 
 in the ochreous gravel of Maidenhead, by the Eev. C. Kingsley 
 and Mr. Lubbock; the identification of this fossil with the 
 living species being made by Professor Owen. A second fossil 
 skull of the same arctic animal was afterwards found by 
 Mr. Lubbock near Bromley, in the valley of a small tribu 
 tary of the Thames; and two others were dug up at Bath 
 Easton from the gravel of the valley of the Avon. Professor 
 Owen has truly said, that, c as this quadruped has a constitu 
 tion fitting it at present to inhabit the high northern regions 
 of America, we can hardly doubt that its former companions, 
 the warmly-clad mammoth and the two-horned woolly rhino 
 ceros (R. tichorhinus), were in like manner capable of sup 
 porting life in a cold climate.' f 
 
 I have alluded at p. 144 to the recent discovery of this same 
 buffalo near Chauny, in the valley of the Oise, in France ; and 
 in 1856 I found a skull of it preserved in the museum at 
 Berlin, which Professor Quenstedt, the curator, had correctly 
 named so long ago as 1836, when the fossil was dug out 
 of drift, in the hill called the Kreuzberg, in the southern 
 
 * Quarterly Geological Journal, he merely meant extinct in England, 
 
 vol. viii. p. 190, 1852. f Geological Quarterly Journal, 
 
 Mr. Brown calls them extinct species, vol. xii. p. 124. 
 which may mislead some readers, but 
 
CHAP. ix. MIGKATIONS OF QUADKUPEDS. 157 
 
 suburbs of that city. By an account published at the time, 
 we find that the mammalia which accompanied the musk 
 buffalo were the mammoth and tichorhine rhinoceros, with the 
 horse and ox ; * but I can find no record of the occurrence of 
 a hippopotamus, nor of Elephas antiquus or Rhinoceros 
 leptorhinus, in the drift of the north of Germany, bordering 
 the Baltic. 
 
 On the other hand, in another locality in the same drift of 
 North Grermany, Dr. Hensel, of Berlin, detected, near Qued- 
 linburg, the Norwegian Lemming (Myodes Lemmus), and 
 another species of the same family called by Pallas Myodes tor- 
 quatus (by Hensel, Misothermus torquatus) a still more arctic 
 quadruped, found by Parry in latitude 82, and which never 
 strays farther south than the northern borders of the woody 
 region. Professor Beyrich also informs me that the remains of 
 the Rhinoceros tichorhinus were obtained at the same place.f 
 
 As an example of what may possibly have constituted a 
 more southern fauna in the valley of the Thames, I may 
 allude to the fossil remains found in the fluviatile alluvium 
 of Grray's Thurrock, in Essex, situated on the left bank of the 
 river, twenty-one miles below London. The strata of brick- 
 earth, loam, and gravel exposed to view in artificial excava 
 tions in that spot, are precisely such as would be formed by the 
 silting up of an old river channel. Among the mammalia are 
 Elephas antiquus, Rhinoceros leptorhinus (_R. megarhinus 
 Christol), Hippopotamus major, species of horse, bear, ox, 
 stag, &c., and, among the accompanying shells, Cyrenaflumi- 
 nalis, which is extremely abundant, instead of being scarce, 
 as at Abbeville. It is associated with Unio littoralis, fig. 22, 
 also in great numbers, and with both valves united. This 
 conspicuous fresh-water mussel is no longer an inhabitant of 
 
 * Leonhard and Bronn's Jahrbuch, gischen Gesellschaft, vol. vii. 1855, 
 1836, p. 215. p. 548, &c. 
 
 f Zeitschrift der Deutschen Greolo- 
 
158 MAMMALS OF AMOORLAND. CHAP. ix. 
 
 the British Isles, but still lives in the Seine, and is still more 
 abundant in the Loire. Another fresh-water univalve (Palu- 
 dina marginata Michaud), not British, but common in the 
 
 Fig. 22 
 
 Unio littoralis. Gray's Thurrock, Essex; extinct in British Isles, 
 living in France. 
 
 south of France, likewise occurs, and a peculiar variety of 
 Gyclas amnica, which by some naturalists has been regarded 
 as a distinct species. With these, moreover, is found a peculiar 
 variety of Valvata piscinalis. 
 
 If we consult Dr. Von Schrenck's account of the living 
 mammalia of Amoorland, lying between lat. 45 and 55 North, 
 we learn that, in that part of North -Eastern Asia recently 
 annexed to the Russian empire, no less than thirty-four out 
 of fifty-eight living quadrupeds are identical with European 
 species, while some of those which do not extend their range 
 to Europe are arctic, others tropical forms. The Bengal tiger 
 ranges northwards occasionally to lat. 52 North, where he 
 chiefly subsists on the flesh of the rein-deer, and the same 
 tiger abounds in lat. 48, to which the small tail-less hare or 
 pika, a polar resident, sometimes wanders southwards.* We 
 may readily conceive that the countries now drained by the 
 Thames, the Somme, and the Seine, were, in the post-pliocene 
 
 * Mammalia of Amoorland, Natural History Keview, vol. i. p. 12, 1861. 
 
CHAP. IX. CHRONOLOGY OF FLUYIATILE DEPOSITS. 159 
 
 period, on the borders of two distinct zoological provinces, 
 one lying to the north, the other to the south, in which case 
 many species belonging to each fauna endowed with migra 
 tory habits, like the living musk-buffalo or the Bengal tiger, 
 may have been ready to take advantage of any, even the 
 slightest, change in their favour to invade the neighbouring 
 province, whether in the summer or winter months, or 
 permanently for a series of years, or centuries. The Elephas 
 antiquus and its associated Rhinoceros leptorhinus may 
 have preceded the mammoth and tichorhine rhinoceros in the 
 valley of the Thames, or both may have alternately prevailed 
 in the same area in the post-pliocene period. 
 
 In attempting to settle the chronology of fluviatile deposits, 
 it is almost equally difficult to avail ourselves of the evidence 
 of organic remains and of the superposition of the strata, 
 for we may find two old river-beds on the same level in 
 juxta-position, one of them perhaps many thousands of years 
 posterior in date to the other. I have seen an example of 
 this at Ilford, where the Thames, or a tributary stream, 
 has at some former period cut through sands containing 
 Cyrena fluminalis, and again filled up the channel with 
 argillaceous matter, evidently derived from the waste of the 
 tertiary London clay. Such shiftings of the site of the main 
 channel of the river, the frequent removal of gravel and sand 
 previously deposited, and the throwing down of new alluvium, 
 the flooding of tributaries, the rising and sinking of the land, 
 fluctuations in the cold and heat of the climate all these 
 changes seem to have given rise to that complexity in the 
 fluviatile deposits of the Thames, which accounts for the small 
 progress we have hitherto made in determining their order of 
 succession, and that of the imbedded groups of quadrupeds. 
 It may happen, as at Brentford and Ilford, that sand-pits in 
 two adjoining fields may each contain distinct species of 
 elephant and rhinoceros ; and they may occur at the same 
 
160 CHRONOLOGY OF FLTJVIATILE DEPOSITS. CHAP. ix. 
 
 depth from the surface, and yet be referable each to two sub 
 divisions of the post-pliocene epoch, separated by thousands 
 of years. 
 
 The relation of the glacial period to alluvial deposits, such as 
 that of Gray's Thurrock, where the Cyrena fluminalis, Unio 
 littoralisy and the hippopotamus seem rather to imply a warmer 
 climate, has been a matter of long and animated discussion. 
 Patches of the northern drift, at elevations of about two 
 hundred feet above the Thames, occur in the neighbourhood 
 of London, as at Muswell Hill, near Highgate. In this drift, 
 blocks of granite, syenite, greenstone, coal-measure sandstone 
 with its fossils, and other paleozoic rocks, and the wreck of 
 chalk and oolite, occur confusedly mixed together. The same 
 glacial formation is also found capping some of the Essex hills 
 farther to the east, and extending some way down their 
 southern slopes towards the valley of the Thames. Although 
 no fragments washed out of these older and upland drifts 
 have been found in the gravel of the Thames containing 
 elephants' bones, it is fair to presume that the glacial formation 
 is the older of the two, for reasons given before at p. 130, 
 and that it originated, as we shall see in a future chapter, when 
 the greater part of England was submerged beneath the sea. 
 In short, we must suppose that the basin of the Thames and 
 all its fluviatile deposits are post-glacial, in the modified sense 
 of that term ; i. e. that they were subsequent to the marine 
 drift of the central and northern counties, and to the period 
 of its emergence above the level of the sea. 
 
 Having offered these general remarks on the alluvium of 
 the Thames, I may now say something of the implements 
 hitherto discovered in it. In the British Museum there is a 
 flint weapon of the spear-headed form, such as is represented in 
 fig. 8, p. 114, which we are told was found with an elephant's 
 tooth at Black Mary's, near Gray's Inn Lane, London. In 
 a letter dated 1715, printed in Herne's edition of 'Leland's 
 
CHAP. IX. FLINT IMPLEMENTS IN MIDDLESEX AND SURREY. 161 
 
 Collectanea,' vol. i. p. 73, it is stated to have been found in the 
 presence of Mr. Conyers, with the skeleton of an elephant.* 
 So many bones of the elephant, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus 
 have been found in the gravel on which London stands, that 
 there is no reason to doubt the statement as handed down to 
 us. Fossil remains of all these three genera have been dug 
 up on the site of Waterloo Place, St. James's Square, Charing 
 Cross, the London Docks, Limehouse, Bethnal Green, and 
 other places within the memory of persons now living. 
 In the gravel and sand of Shacklewell, in the northern 
 suburbs of London, I have myself collected specimens of 
 the Cyrena fluminalis in great numbers, see fig. 17 c, p. 124, 
 with the bones of deer and other mammalia. 
 
 In the alluvium also of the Wey, near Gruildford, in a 
 place called Pease Marsh, a wedge-shaped flint implement, 
 resembling one brought from St. Acheul, by Mr. Prestwich, 
 and compared by some antiquaries to a sling-stone, was ob 
 tained in 1836 by Mr. Whitburn, four feet deep in sand and 
 gravel, in which the teeth and tusks of elephants had been 
 found. The Wey flows through the gorge of the North 
 Downs at Gruildford to join the Thames. Mr. Austen has 
 shown that this drift is so ancient that one part of it had been 
 disturbed and tilted before another part was thrown down.f 
 
 Among other places where flint tools of the antique type 
 have been met with in the course of the last three years, I 
 may mention one of an oval form found by Mr. Evans in 
 the valley of the Darent, and another which the same observer 
 found lying on the shore at Swalecliff, near Whitstable, in 
 Kent, where Mr. Prestwich had previously described a fresh 
 water deposit, resting on the London clay, and consisting 
 chiefly of gravel, in which an elephant's tooth and the bones 
 of a bear were embedded. The, flint implement was deeply 
 
 * Evans, Archseologia, 1860. 
 
 f Quarterly Geological Journal, 1851, vol. vii. p. 278. 
 
 M 
 
162 FLINT IMPLEMENTS IN KENT. CHAP. TX. 
 
 discoloured and of a peculiar bright light brown colour, similar 
 to that of the old fluviatile gravel in the cliff. 
 
 Another flint implement was found in 1860, by Mr. T. 
 Leech, at the foot of the cliff between Herne Bay and the 
 Eeculvers, and on further search five other specimens of the 
 spear-head pattern so common at Amiens. Messrs. Prestwich 
 and Evans have since found three other similar tools on the 
 beach, at the base of the same wasting cliff, which consists of 
 sandy Eocene strata. Upon these, at the top of the cliff, is a 
 pebbly deposit of fresh-water origin, about fifty feet above 
 the sea-level, from which the flint weapons must have been 
 derived. Such old alluvial deposits now capping the cliffs of 
 Kent seem to have been the river-beds of tributaries of the 
 Thames before the sea encroached to its present position and 
 widened its estuary. On following up one of these fresh-water 
 deposits westward of the Eeculvers, Mr. Prestwich found in it, 
 at Chislet, near Grove Ferry, the Cyrena fluminalis among 
 other shells. 
 
 The changes which have taken place in the physical geo 
 graphy of this part of England during, or since, the post- 
 pliocene period, have consisted partly of such encroachments 
 of the sea on the coast as are now going on, and partly of a 
 general subsidence of the land. Among the signs of the 
 latter movement may be mentioned a fresh-water formation 
 at Faversham, below the level of the sea. The gravel there 
 contains exclusively land and fluviatile shells, of the same 
 species as those of other localities of the post-pliocene allu 
 vium before mentioned, and must have been formed when 
 the river was at a higher level and when it extended farther 
 east. At that era it was probably a tributary of the Ehine, 
 as represented by Mr. Trimmer in his ideal restoration of the 
 geography of the olden time.* For England was then united 
 to the continent, and what is now the German Ocean was 
 
 * Quarterly Geological Journal, vol. ix. pi. 13, No. 4. 
 
CHAP. IX. FLINT IMPLEMENTS IN BEDFORDSHIRE. 163 
 
 land. It is well known that in many places, especially near 
 the coast of Holland, elephants' tusks and other bones are 
 often dredged up from the bed of that shallow sea, and the 
 reader will see in the map given in Chap. XIII. how vast would 
 be the conversion of sea into land by an upheaval of 600 feet. 
 Vertical movements of much less than half that amount would 
 account for the annexation of England to the continent, and 
 the extension of the Thames and its valley far to the north 
 east, and the flowing of rivers from the easternmost parts of 
 Kent and Essex into the Thames, instead of emptying them 
 selves into its estuary. 
 
 More than a dozen flint weapons of the Amiens type have 
 already been found in the basin of the Thames; but the 
 geological position of no one of them has as yet been ascer 
 tained with the same accuracy as that of many of the tools 
 dug up in the valley of the Somme, or some other British 
 examples which will presently be mentioned. 
 
 Flint Implements of the Valley of the Ouse, near Bedford. 
 
 The ancient fluviatile gravel of the valley of the Ouse, 
 around Bedford, has been noted for the last thirty years for 
 yielding to collectors a rich harvest of the bones of extinct 
 mammalia ; those of the elephant, rhinoceros, and hippopo 
 tamus being amongst the number. Mr. James Wyatt, F.Gr.S., 
 having returned in 1860 from France, where, in the gravel- 
 pits of St. Acheul, near Amiens, he had marked the position 
 of the flint tools, resolved to watch carefully the excavation of 
 the gravel-pits at Biddenham, two miles WNW. of Bedford, 
 in the hope of finding there similar works of art. With this 
 view he paid almost daily visits for months in succession to 
 those pits, and was at last rewarded by the discovery of two 
 well-formed implements, one of the spear-head and the other 
 of the oval shape, perfect counterparts of the two prevailing 
 
164 SECTION ACROSS THE VALLEY OF THE OUSE. CHAP. ix. 
 
 French types figured at pp. 114, 115. Both specimens were 
 thrown out by the workmen on the same day from the lowest 
 bed of stratified gravel and sand, thirteen feet thick, containing 
 bones of the elephant, deer, and ox, and many fresh-water 
 shells. The two implements occurred at the depth of thirteen 
 feet from the surface of the soil, and rested immediately on 
 solid beds of oolitic limestone, as represented in the accom 
 panying section. 
 
 Fig. 23 
 
 Section across the Valley of the Ouse, two miles WNW. of Bedford. 
 
 1 Oolitic strata. 
 
 2 Boulder clay, or marine northern drift, rising to about ninety feet 
 
 above the Ouse. 
 
 3 Ancient gravel, with elephant bones, freshwater shells, and flint im 
 
 plements. 
 
 4 Modern alluvium of the Ouse. 
 
 a Biddenham gravel pits, at the bottom of which flint tools were 
 found. 
 
 I examined these pits, in 1861, in company with Messrs. 
 Prestwich, Evans, and Wyatt, and we collected ten species of 
 shells from the stratified drift No. 3, or the beds overlying 
 the lowest gravel from which the flint implements had been 
 exhumed. They were all of common fluviatile and land 
 species now living in the same part of England. Since our 
 visit, Mr. Wyatt has added to them Paludina marginata 
 Michaud (Hydrobia of some authors, see p. 225 infra), species 
 of the South of France no longer inhabiting the British Isles. 
 The same geologist has also found, since we were at Bidden- 
 , ham, several other flint tools of corresponding type, both there 
 and at other localities in the Valley of the Ouse, near Bedford. 
 
 The boulder clay, No. 2, extends for miles in all directions, 
 and was evidently once continuous from b to c, before the 
 
CHAP. IX. FLINT TOOLS NEAK BEDFOKD. 165 
 
 valley was scooped out. It is a portion of the great marine 
 glacial drift of the midland counties of England, and contains 
 blocks, some of large size, not only of the oolite of the neigh 
 bourhood, but of chalk and other rocks transported from still 
 greater distances, such as syenite, basalt, quartz, and new red 
 sandstone. These erratic blocks of foreign origin are often 
 polished and striated, having undergone what is called 
 glaciation, of which more will be said by and by. Blocks 
 of the same mineral character, embedded at Biddenham 
 in the gravel No. 3, have lost all signs of this striation by 
 the friction to which they were subjected in the old river-bed. 
 The great width of the valley of the Ouse, which is some 
 times two miles, has not been expressed in the diagram. It 
 may have been shaped out by the joint action of the river and 
 the tides when this part of England was emerging from the 
 waters of the glacial sea, the boulder clay being first cut 
 through, and then an equal thickness of underlying oolite. 
 After this denudation, which may have accompanied the 
 emergence of the land, the country was inhabited by the 
 primitive people who fashioned the flint tools. The 
 old river, aided perhaps by the continued upheaval of the 
 whole country, or by oscillations in its level, went on 
 widening and deepening the valley, often shifting its channel, 
 until at length a broad area was covered by a succession 
 of the earliest and latest deposits, which may have cor 
 responded in age to the higher and lower gravels of the valley 
 of the Somme, already described, p. 130. Mr. Prestwich 
 has hinted that perhaps the drift of Biddenham, which is 
 thirty feet above the present level of the Ouse, and contains 
 bones of Elephas primigenius, and the shells above alluded 
 to, may be a higher level alluvium ; and the gravel on which, 
 the town of Bedford is built, which is at an inferior level 
 relatively to the Ouse, may be a lower deposit and con 
 sequently newer. But we have scarcely as yet sufficient data 
 
166 ANCIENT FLINT IMPLEMENTS CHAP. ix. 
 
 to enable us to determine the relative age of these strata. In 
 the Bedford gravel, last alluded to, some remains of Hippopo 
 tamus major and Elephas antiquus have been discovered, 
 and an assemblage of land and freshwater shells of recent 
 species, but not precisely the same as those of Biddenham. 
 
 One step at least we gain by the Bedford sections, which 
 those of Amiens and Abbeville had not enabled us to make. 
 They teach us that the fabricators of the antique tools, and 
 the extinct mammalia coeval with them, were all post-glacial, 
 or, in other words, posterior to the grand submergence of 
 Central England beneath the waters of the glacial sea. 
 
 Flint Implements in a Freshwater Deposit at Hoxne in 
 Suffolk. 
 
 So early as the first year of the present century, a re 
 markable paper was communicated to the Society of An 
 tiquaries by Mr. John Frere, in which he gave a clear 
 description of the discovery at Hoxne, near Diss, in Suffolk, 
 of flint tools of the type since found at Amiens, adding at the 
 same time good geological reasons for presuming that their an 
 tiquity was very great, or, as he expressed it, beyond that of 
 the present world, meaning the actual state of the physical 
 geography of that region. ( The flints,' he said, ' were 
 evidently weapons of war, fabricated and used by a people 
 who had not the use of metals. They lay in great numbers at 
 the depth of about twelve feet in a stratified soil which was dug 
 into for the purpose of raising clay for bricks. Under a foot 
 and a half of vegetable earth was clay seven and a half feet 
 thick, and beneath this one foot of sand with shells, and under 
 , this two feet of gravel, in which the shaped flints were found 
 generally at the rate of five or six in a square yard. In the 
 sandy beds with shells were found the jaw bone and teeth of 
 an enormous unknown animal. The manner in which the 
 
CHAP. ix. AT HOXNE, NEAR DISS, SUFFOLK. 167 
 
 flint weapons lay would lead to the persuasion that it was a 
 place of their manufacture, and not of their accidental de 
 posit. Their numbers were so great that the man who carried 
 on the brick- work told me that before he was aware of their 
 being objects of curiosity, he had emptied baskets full of them 
 into the ruts of the adjoining road.' 
 
 Mr. Frere then goes on to explain that the strata in which 
 the flints occur are disposed horizontally, and do not lie at the 
 foot of any higher ground, so that portions of them must have 
 been removed when the adjoining valley was hollowed out. 
 If the author had not mistaken the freshwater shells associated 
 with the tools for marine species, there would have been 
 nothing to correct in his account of the geology of the dis 
 trict, for he distinctly perceived that the strata in which the 
 implements were embedded had, since that time, undergone 
 very extensive denudation.* Specimens of the flint spear 
 heads, sent to London by Mr. Frere, are still preserved in the 
 British Museum, and others are in the collection of the Society 
 of Antiquaries. 
 
 Mr. Prestwich's attention was called by Mr. Evans to those 
 weapons, as well as to Mr. Frere's memoir after his return 
 from Amiens in 1859, and he lost no time in visiting Hoxne, 
 a village five miles eastward of Diss. It is not a little re 
 markable that he should have found, after a lapse of sixty 
 years, that the extraction of clay was still going on in the 
 same brick-pit. Only a few months before his arrival, two 
 flint instruments had been dug out of the clay, one from a 
 depth of seven and the other of ten feet from the surface. 
 Others have since been disinterred from undisturbed beds of 
 gravel in the same pit. Mr. Amyot, of Diss, has also obtained 
 from the underlying freshwater strata the astragalus of an 
 elephant, and bones of the deer and horse ; but although 
 many of the old implements have recently been discovered 
 * Frere, Archseologia for 1800, vol. xiii. p. 206. 
 
168 FLINT IMPLEMENTS IN SUFFOLK. CHAP. ix. 
 
 in situ in regular strata and preserved by Sir Edward Kerrison, 
 no bones of extinct mammalia seem as yet to have been 
 actually seen in the same stratum with one of the tools. 
 
 By reference to the annexed section, the geologist will see 
 that the basin-shaped hollow a, b, c, has been filled up gradually 
 with the fresh- water strata 3, 4, 5, after the same cavity a, 6, c, 
 had been previously excavated out of the more ancient boulder 
 clay, No. 6. The relative position of these formations will be 
 better understood when I have described in the Twelfth 
 
 Fig. 24 
 
 farm 
 
 Sea, Level 9 Chalk 
 
 Section showing the position of the flint weapons at Hoxne, near Diss, Suffolk. 
 See Prestwich, Philosophical Transactions, PI. 11. 1860. 
 
 1 Gravel of Gold Brook, a tributary of the "Waveny. 
 
 2 Higher-level gravel overlying the freshwater deposit. 
 
 3 and 4. Sand and gravel, with freshwater shells, and flint imple 
 
 ments, and bones of mammalia. 
 
 5 Peaty and clayey beds, with same fossils. 
 
 6 Boulder clay or glacial drift. 
 
 7 Sand and gravel below boulder clay. 
 
 8 Chalk with flints. 
 
 Chapter the structure of Norfolk and Suffolk as laid open in 
 the sea-cliffs at Mundesley, about thirty miles distant from 
 Hoxne, in a North North-east direction. 
 
 I examined the deposits at Hoxne in 1860, when I had 
 the advantage of being accompanied by the Rev. J. GKmn, and 
 the Rev. S. W. King. In the loamy beds 3 and 4, fig. 24, 
 we observed the common river shell Valvata piscinalis in 
 great numbers. With it, but much more rare, were Limnea 
 palustris, Planorbis albus, P. spirorbis, Succinea putris, 
 Bithynia tentaculata, Cyclas cornea; and Mr. Prestwich 
 mentions Cyclas amnica and fragments of a Unio, besides 
 
CHAP. ix. FLINT IMPLEMENTS IN SUFFOLK. 169 
 
 several land shells. In the black peaty mass No. 5, fragments 
 of wood of the oak, yew, and fir have been recognised. The 
 flint weapons which I have seen from Hoxne are so much 
 more perfect, and have their cutting edge so much sharper 
 than those from the Valley of the Somme, that they seem 
 neither to have been used by man, nor to have been rolled in 
 the bed of a river. The opinion of Mr. Frere, therefore, that 
 there may have been a manufactory of weapons on the spot, 
 appears probable. 
 
 Flint Implements at Icklingham in Suffolk. 
 
 In another part of Suffolk, at Icklingham, in the Valley of 
 the Lark, below Bury St. Edmund's, there is a bed of gravel, 
 in which two flints of a lance-head form have been found 
 at the depth of four feet from the surface. I have visited 
 the spot, which has been correctly described by Mr. Prestwich.* 
 
 The section of the Bedford tool-bearing alluvium, given at 
 p. 155, may serve to illustrate that of Icklingham, if we sub 
 stitute chalk for oolite, and the river Lark for the Ouse. In 
 both cases, the present bed of the river is about thirty feet 
 below the level of the old gravel, and the chalk hill, which 
 bounds the Valley of the Lark on the right side, is capped 
 like the oolite of Biddenham by boulder clay, which rises to 
 the height of one hundred feet above the Lark. About 
 twelve years ago, a large erratic block, above four feet in 
 diameter, was dug out of the boulder clay at Icklingham, 
 which I found to consist of a hard siliceous schist, apparently 
 a Silurian rock, which must have come from a remote region. 
 The tool-bearing gravel here, as in the case to which it has 
 been compared near Bedford, is proved to be newer than the 
 glacial drift, by containing pebbles of basalt and other rocks 
 derived from that formation. 
 
 * Quarterly Geological Journal, 1861, vol. xvii. p. 364. 
 
170 FOSSIL WORKS OF ART IN SOMERSETSHIRE. CHAP. x. 
 
 CHAPTEE X. 
 
 CAVERN DEPOSITS, AND PLACE OF SEPULTURE OF THE POST- 
 PLIOCENE PERIOD. 
 
 FLINT IMPLEMENTS IN CAVE CONTAINING HYJENA AND OTHEE EXTINCT 
 
 MAMMALIA IN SOMERSETSHIRE CAVES OF THE GOWER PENINSULA IN 
 
 SOUTH WALES RHINOCEROS HEMITO3CHUS OSSIFEROUS CAVES NEAR 
 
 PALERMO SICILY ONCE PART OF AFRICA RISE OF BED OF THE 
 
 MEDITERRANEAN TO THE HEIGHT OF THREE HUNDRED FEET IN THE 
 
 HUMAN PERIOD IN SARDINIA BURIAL PLACE OF POST-PLIOCENE DATE 
 
 OF AURIGNAC IN THE SOUTH OF FRANCE RHINOCEROS TICHORHINUS 
 EATEN BY MAN M. LARTET ON EXTINCT MAMMALIA AND WORKS OF 
 
 ART FOUND IN THE AURIGNAC CAVE RELATIVE ANTIQUITY OF THE 
 
 SAME, CONSIDERED. 
 
 Works of Art associated with extinct Mammalia in a 
 Cavern in Somersetshire. 
 
 THE only British cave from which implements resembling 
 those of Amiens have been obtained, since the attention 
 of geologists has been awakened to the importance of minutely 
 observing the position of such relics relatively to the asso 
 ciated fossil mammalia, is that recently opened near Wells in 
 Somersetshire. It occurs near the cave of Wokey Hole, from 
 the mouth of which the river Axe issues on the southern 
 flanks of the Mendips. No one had suspected that on the left 
 side of the ravine, through which the river flows after escaping 
 from its subterranean channel, there were other caves and 
 fissures concealed beneath the green sward of the steep 
 sloping bank. About ten years ago, a canal was made, 
 several hundred yards in length, for the purpose of leading 
 the waters of the Axe to a paper-mill, now occupying the 
 middle of the ravine. In carrying out this work, about 
 twelve feet of the left bank was cut away, and a cavernous 
 
CHAP. x. FOSSIL WOKKS OF ART IN SOMERSETSHIRE. 171 
 
 fissure, choked up to the roof with ossiferous loam, was then, 
 for the first time, exposed to view. This great cavity, origi 
 nally nine feet high and thirty-six wide, traversed the 
 dolomitic conglomerate ; and fragments of that rock, some 
 angular and others water-worn, were scattered through the 
 red mud of the cave, in which fossil remains were abundant. 
 For an account of them and the position they occupied we 
 are indebted to Mr. Dawkins, F.Gr.S., who, in company with 
 Mr. Williamson, explored the cavern in 1859, and obtained 
 from it the bones of the Hycena spelcea in such numbers as to 
 lead him to conclude that the cavern had for a long time been 
 a hyaena's den. Among the accompanying animals found fossil 
 in the same bone-earth, were observed Elephas primigenius, 
 Rhinoceros tichorhinus, Ursus spelceus, Bos primigenius, 
 Megaceros hybernicus, Cervus Tarandus (and other species 
 of Cervus), Ursus spelceus., Felis spelcea, Canis Lupus, Canis 
 Vulpes, and teeth and bones of the genus Equus in great 
 numbers. 
 
 Intermixed with the above fossil bones were some arrow 
 heads, made of bone, and many chipped flints, and chipped 
 pieces of chert, a white or bleached flint weapon of the 
 spear-head Amiens type, which was taken out of the undis 
 turbed matrix by Mr. Williamson himself, together with a 
 hyaena's tooth, showing that man had either been contempo 
 raneous with or had preceded the extinct fauna. After 
 penetrating thirty-four feet from the entrance, Mr. Dawkins 
 found the cave bifurcating into two branches, one of which 
 was vertical. By this rent, perhaps, some part of the contents 
 of the cave may have been introduced.* 
 
 When I examined the spot in 1860, after I had been shown 
 some remains of the hyaena collected there, I felt convinced 
 that a complete revolution must have taken place in the 
 
 * W. B. Dawkins, F.G.S., Geological Society's Proceedings, January 1862. 
 
172 OSSIFEROUS CAYES IN SOUTH WALES. CHAP. x. 
 
 topography of the district since the time of the extinct 
 quadrupeds. I was not aware at the time that flint tools 
 had been met with in the same bone-deposit. 
 
 Caves of Gower in Glamorganshire, South Wales. 
 
 The ossiferous caves of the peninsula of Grower in Gla 
 morganshire have been diligently explored of late years by 
 Dr. Falconer and Lieutenant-Colonel E. K. Wood, the latter 
 of whom has discovered and thoroughly investigated the con 
 tents of many which were previously unknown. Among 
 their contents have been found the remains of almost every 
 quadruped elsewhere found fossil in British caves : in some 
 places the JElephas primigenius, accompanied by its usual 
 companion the Rhinoceros tichorhinus, in others Elephas 
 antiquus associated with Rhinoceros hemitoschus Falconer ; 
 the extinct animals being often embedded, as in the Belgian 
 caves, in the same matrix with species now living in Europe, 
 such as the common badger (Melee taxus), the common wolf, 
 and the fox. 
 
 In a cavernous fissure called the Raven's cliff, teeth of 
 several individuals of Hippopotamus major, both young and 
 old, were found ; and this in a district where there is now 
 scarce a rill of running water, much less a river in which such 
 quadrupeds could swim. In one of the caves, called Spritsail 
 Tor, both of the elephants above named were observed, 
 with a great many other quadrupeds of recent and extinct 
 species. 
 
 From one fissure, called Bosco's Den, no less than one thou 
 sand antlers of the rein-deer, chiefly of the variety called 
 Cervus Guettardi, were extracted by the persevering ex 
 ertions of Colonel Wood, who estimated that several hundred 
 more still remained in the bone-earth of the same rent. 
 
 They were mostly shed horns, and of young animals ; and 
 
CHAP. x. RHINOCEROS HEMITCECHUS COEXISTENT WITH MAN. 173 
 
 had been washed into the rent with other bones, and with 
 angular fragments of limestone, and all enveloped in the same 
 ochreous rnud. Among the other bones, which were not 
 numerous, were those of the cave-bear, wolf, fox, ox, stag, 
 and field-mouse. 
 
 But the discovery of most importance, as bearing on the 
 subject of the present work, is the occurrence in a newly- 
 discovered cave, called Long Hole, by Colonel Wood, in 1861, 
 of the remains of two species of rhinoceros, R. tichorhinus and 
 R. hemitoechus Falconer, in an undisturbed deposit, in the 
 lower part of which were some well-shaped flint knives, 
 evidently of human workmanship. It is clear from their po 
 sition that man was coeval with these two species. We have 
 elsewhere independent proofs of his coexistence with every 
 other species of the cave-fauna of Glamorganshire ; but this 
 is the first well-authenticated example of the occurrence of 
 R. hemitoechus in connection with human implements. 
 
 In the fossil fauna of the valley of the Thames, Rhinoceros 
 leptorhinus was mentioned as occurring at Gray's Thurrock 
 with Elephas antiquus. Dr. Falconer, in a memoir which 
 he is now preparing for the press on the European pliocene 
 and post-pliocene species of the genus Rhinoceros, has shown 
 that, under the above name of R. leptorhinus, three distinct 
 species have been confounded by Cuvier, Owen, and other 
 palaeontologists : 
 
 1. R. Megarhinus Christol, being the original and typical 
 R. leptorhinus of Cuvier, founded on Cortesi's Monte Zago 
 cranium, and the only pliocene, or post-pliocene European 
 species, that had not a nasal septum. Gray's Thurrock, &c. 
 
 2. R. hemitoechus Falconer, in which the ossification of the 
 septum dividing the nostrils is incomplete in the middle, 
 besides other cranial and dental characters distinguishing it 
 from R. tichorhinus, accompanies Elephas antiquus in most 
 of the oldest British bone-caves, such as Kirkdale, Cefn, 
 
174 OSSIFEEOUS CAVES IN SICILY. CHAP. x. 
 
 Durdham Down, Minchin Hole, and other Grower caverns 
 also found at Clacton, in Essex, and in Northamptonshire. 
 3. R. etruscus Falconer, a comparatively slight and slender 
 form, also with an incomplete bony septum,* occurs deep 
 in the Val d'Arno deposits, and in the 'Forest bed,' and 
 superimposed blue clays, with lignite, of the Norfolk coast, 
 but nowhere as yet found in the ossiferous caves in Britain. 
 
 Dr. Falconer announced in 1859 his opinion that the 
 filling up of the Grower caves in South Wales took place after 
 the deposition of the marine boulder clay,f an opinion in 
 harmony with what we have since learnt from the section of 
 the gravels near Bedford, given above at p. 155, where a 
 fauna corresponding to that of the Welsh caves characterises 
 the ancient alluvium, and is shown to be clearly post-glacial, 
 in the sense of being posterior in date to the submergence of 
 the midland counties beneath the waters of the glacial sea. 
 The Grower caves in general have their floors strewed over 
 with sand, containing marine shells, all of living species ; and 
 there are raised beaches on the adjoining coast, and other 
 geological signs of great alteration in the relative level of 
 land and sea, since that country was inhabited by the extinct 
 mammalia, some of which, as we have seen, were certainly 
 coeval with man. 
 
 Ossiferous Caves in North of Sicily. 
 
 Greologists have long been familiar with the fact that on 
 the northern coast of Sicily, between Termini on the east, and 
 Trapani on the west, there are many caves containing the 
 bones of extinct animals. These caves are situated in rocks 
 of hippurite limestone, a member of the cretaceous series, and 
 some of them may be seen on both sides of the Bay of 
 
 * See Falconer, Quarterly Geolo- f Geological Quarterly Journal, 
 gical Journal, vol. xv. p. 602. vol. xvi. p. 491, 1860. 
 
CHAP. x. OSSIFEROUS GATES IN SICILY. 175 
 
 Palermo. If in the neighbourhood of that city we proceed 
 from the sea inland, ascending a sloping terrace, composed of 
 the marine Newer Pliocene strata, we reach about a mile from 
 the shore, and at the height of about one hundred and eighty 
 feet above it. a precipice of limestone, at the base of which 
 appear the entrances of several caves. In that of San Giro, 
 on the east side of the bay, we find at the bottom sand with 
 marine shells, forty species of which have been examined, and 
 found almost all to agree specifically with mollusca now 
 inhabiting the Mediterranean. Higher in position, and 
 resting on the sand, is a breccia, composed of pieces of 
 limestone, quartz, and schist in a matrix of brown marl, 
 through which land shells are dispersed, together with 
 bones of. two species of hippopotamus, as determined by 
 Dr. Falconer. Certain bones of the skeleton were counted in 
 such numbers as to prove that they must have belonged to 
 several hundred individuals. With these were associated the 
 remains of Elephas antiquus, and bones of the genera Bos, 
 Cervus, Sus, Ursus, Canis, and a large Felis. Some of these 
 bones have been rolled as if partially subjected to the action 
 of water, and may have been introduced by streams through 
 rents in the hippurite limestone ; but there is now no 
 running water in the neighbourhood, no river such as the 
 hippopotamus might frequent, not even a small brook, so that 
 the physical geography of the district must have been alto 
 gether changed since the time when such remains were swept 
 into fissures, or into the channels of engulfed rivers. 
 
 No proofs seem yet to have been found of the existence of 
 man at the period when the hippopotamus and Elephas an- 
 tiquus flourished at San Giro. But there is another cave 
 called the -Grotto di Maccagnone, which much resembles it 
 in geological position, on the opposite or west side of the Bay 
 of Palermo, near Carini. In the bottom of this cave a bone 
 deposit like that of San Giro occurs, and above it other 
 
176 OSSIFEROUS CAVES IN SICILY. CHAP. x. 
 
 materials reaching to the roof, and evidently washed in from 
 above, through crevices in the limestone. In this upper and 
 newer breccia Dr. Falconer discovered flint knives, bone 
 splinters, bits of charcoal, burnt clay, and other objects in 
 dicating human intervention, mingled with entire land shells, 
 teeth of horses, coprolites of hyaenas, and other bones, the 
 whole agglutinated to one another and to the roof by the 
 infiltration of water holding lime in solution. The perfect 
 condition of the large fragile helices (Helix vermiculatci) 
 afforded satisfactory evidence, says Dr. Falconer, that the 
 various articles were carried into the cave by the tranquil 
 agency of water, and not by any tumultuous action. At a 
 subsequent period other geographical changes took place, so 
 that the cave, after it had been filled, was washed out again, 
 or emptied of its contents with the exception of those patches 
 of breccia which, being cemented together by stalactite, still 
 adhere to the roof.* 
 
 Baron Anca, following up these investigations, explored, in 
 1859, another cave at Mondello, west of Palermo, and north 
 of Mount Grallo, where he discovered molars of the living 
 African elephant, and afterwards additional specimens of the 
 same species in the neighbouring grotto of Olivella, In re 
 ference to this elephant, Dr. Falconer has reminded us that 
 the distance between the nearest part of Sicily and the coast 
 of Africa, between Marsala and Cape Bon, is not more than 
 eighty miles, and Admiral Smyth, in his Memoir on the 
 Mediterranean, states (p. 499) that there is a subaqueous 
 plateau, named by him Adventure Bank, uniting Sicily to 
 Africa by a succession of ridges which are not more than 
 from forty to fifty fathoms under water.f Sicily therefore 
 might be re-united to Africa by movements of upheaval not 
 
 * Note, Quarterly Geological Journal, dent of Geological Society, Anni- 
 yol. xvi. p. 105, 1860. versary Address, February 1861, 
 
 t Note, Cited by Mr. Horner, Presi- p. 42. 
 
CHAP. x. UPRAISED BED OF THE SARDINIAN SEA. 177 
 
 greater than those which are already known to have taken 
 place within the human period on the borders of the Mediter 
 ranean, of which I shall now proceed to cite a well-authen 
 ticated example, observed in Sardinia. 
 
 Rise of the Bed of the Sea to the Height of 300 Feet, in the 
 Human Period, in Sardinia. 
 
 Count Albert de la Marmora, in his description of the geo 
 logy of Sardinia, * has shown that on the southern coast of 
 that island, at Cagliari and in the neighbourhood, an ancient 
 bed of the sea, containing marine shells of living species, and 
 numerous fragments of antique pottery, has been elevated 
 to the height of from seventy to ninety-eight metres above 
 the present level of the Mediterranean. Oysters and other 
 shells, of which a careful list has been published, including 
 the common mussel (Mytilus edulis), many of them having 
 both valves united, occur, embedded in a breccia in which 
 fragments of limestone abound. The mussels are often in 
 such numbers as to impart, when they have decomposed, 
 a violet colour to the marine stratum. Besides pieces of 
 coarse pottery, a flattened ball of baked earthenware, with a 
 hole through its axis, was found in the midst of the marine 
 shells. It is supposed to have been used for weighting a fish 
 ing net. Of this and of one of the fragments of ancient 
 pottery Count de la Marmora has given figures. 
 
 The upraised bed of the sea probably belongs in this in 
 stance to the post-pliocene period, for in a bone breccia, filling 
 fissures in the rocks around Cagliari, the remains of extinct 
 mammalia have been detected ; among which is a new genus 
 of carnivorous quadruped, named Cynotherium by M. Studiati, 
 and figured by Count de la Marmora in his Atlas (pi. vii.), also 
 an extinct species of Lagomys, determined by Cuvier in 1825 
 
 * Partie Geologique, torn. i. pp. 382, 387. 
 N 
 
J78 CLIMATE AND HABITS OP THE HIPPOPOTAMUS. CHAP. x. 
 
 Embedded in the same bone breccia, and enveloped with red 
 earth like the mammalian remains, were detected shells of 
 the Mytilus edulis before mentioned, implying that the 
 marine formation containing shells and pottery had been 
 already upheaved and exposed to denudation before the 
 remains of quadrupeds were washed into these rents and 
 included in the red earth. In the vegetable soil covering the 
 upraised marine stratum, with the older works of art, frag 
 ments of Eoman pottery occur. 
 
 If we assume the average rate of upheaval to have been, as 
 before hinted, p. 58, two and a half feet in a century, 300 feet 
 would give an antiquity of 12,000 years to the Cagliari pot 
 tery, even if we simply confine our estimate to the upheaval 
 above the sea-level, without allowing for the original depth of 
 water in which the mollusca lived. Even then our calculation 
 would merely embrace the period during which the upward 
 movement was going on ; and we can form at present no con- 
 jecture as to the probable era of its commencement or termi 
 nation. 
 
 I learn from Capt. Spratt, E.N., that the island of Crete 
 or Candia, about 135 miles in length, has been raised at its 
 western extremity about twenty-five feet ; so that ancient ports 
 are now high and dry above the sea, while at its eastern end it 
 has sunk so much that the ruins of old towns are seen under 
 water. Revolutions like these in the physical geography of the 
 countries bordering the Mediterranean, may well help us to 
 understand the phenomena of the Palermo caves, and the 
 presence in Sicily of African species of mammalia. 
 
 Climate and Habits of the Hippopotamus. 
 
 As I have alluded more than once in this chapter (pp. 172, 
 
 175) to the occurrence of the remains of the hippopotamus 
 
 in places where there are now no rivers, not even a rill of 
 
 water, and as other bones of the same genus have been met 
 
CHAP. x. CLIMATE AND HABITS OF THE HIPPOPOTAMUS. 179 
 
 with in the lower level gravels of the Somme (p. 134), where 
 large blocks of sandstone seem to imply that ice once played a 
 part in their transportation, it may be well to consider, before 
 proceeding farther, what geographical and climatal conditions 
 are indicated by the presence of these fossil pachyderms. 
 
 It is now very generally conceded that the mammoth and 
 tichorhine rhinoceros were fitted to inhabit northern regions, 
 and it is therefore natural to begin by asking whether the 
 extinct hippopotamus may not in like manner have flourished 
 in a cold climate. In answer to this enquiry, it has been 
 remarked, that the living hippopotami, anatomically speaking 
 so closely allied to the extinct species, are so aquatic and 
 fluviatile in their habits, as to make it difficult to conceive 
 that their congeners could have thriven all the year round 
 in regions where, during winter, the rivers were frozen over 
 for months. Moreover, I have been unable to learn that, in 
 any instance, bones of the hippopotamus have been found in 
 the drift of northern Grermany associated with the remains 
 of the mammoth, tichorhine rhinoceros, musk-buffalo, rein 
 deer, lemming, and other arctic quadrupeds before alluded to 
 (p. 157); yet, though not proved to have ever made a part 
 of such a fauna, the presence of the fossil hippopotamus north 
 of the fiftieth parallel of latitude naturally tempts us to 
 speculate on the migratory powers and instincts of some of 
 the extinct species of the genus. They may have resembled, 
 in this respect, the living musk-buffalo, herds of which pass 
 for hundreds of miles over the ice to the rich pastures of 
 Melville Island, and then return again to southern latitudes 
 before the ice breaks up. 
 
 I am indebted to Dr. Falconer for having called my 
 attention to the account given by an experienced zoologist, 
 Dr. Andrew Smith,* of the migratory habits of the living 
 hippopotamus of Southern Africa (H. amphibius, Linn.). 
 
 * Illustrations of the Zoology of South Africa : art. ' Hippopotamus.' 
 
 N 2 
 
180 CLIMATE AND HABITS OF THE HIPPOPOTAMUS. CHAP. x. 
 
 He states that, when the Dutch first colonized the Cape of 
 Good Hope, this animal abounded in all the great rivers, as 
 far south as the land extends; whereas, in 1849, they had all 
 disappeared, scarcely one remaining even within a moderate 
 distance of the colony. He also tells us that this species 
 evinces great sagacity in changing its quarters whenever 
 danger threatens, quitting every district invaded by settlers 
 bearing fire-arms. Bulky as they are, they can travel 
 speedily for miles over land from one pool of a dried-up 
 river to another ; but it is by water that their powers of 
 locomotion are surpassingly great, not only in rivers, but in 
 the sea, for they are far from confining themselves to fresh 
 water. Indeed, Dr. Smith finds it ' difficult to decide whether, 
 during the daytime and when not feeding, they prefer the 
 pools of rivers or the waters of the ocean for their abode.' In 
 districts where they have been disturbed by man, they feed 
 almost entirely in the night, chiefly on certain kinds of grass, 
 but also on brushwood. Dr. Smith relates that, in an ex 
 pedition which he made north of Port Natal, he found them 
 swarming in all the rivers about the tropic of Capricorn, 
 Here they were often seen to have left their foot-prints on 
 the sands, entering or coming out of the salt water ; and on 
 one occasion Smith's party tried in vain to intercept a 
 female with her young as she was making her way to the sea. 
 Another female, which they had wounded on her precipitate 
 retreat to the sea, was afterwards shot in that element. 
 
 The geologist, therefore, may freely speculate on the time 
 when herds of hippopotami issued from North African rivers, 
 such as the Nile, and swam northwards in summer along the 
 coasts of the Mediterranean, or even occasionally visited 
 islands near the shore. Here and there they may have landed 
 to graze or browse, tarrying awhile and afterwards continuing 
 their course northwards. Others may have swum in a few 
 summer days from rivers in the south of Spain or France to 
 
CHAP. x. POST-PLIOCENE BURIAL-PLACE, SOUTH OF FRANCE. 181 
 
 the Somme, Thames, or Severn, making timely retreat to the 
 south before the snow and ice set in. 
 
 Burial-place at A urignac, in the South of France, of 
 Post-pliocene Date. 
 
 I have alluded in the beginning of the fourth chapter (p. 58) 
 to a custom prevalent among rude nations of consigning to the 
 tomb works of art, once the property of the dead or objects 
 of their affection, and even of storing up, in many cases, 
 animal food destined for the manes of the defunct in a future 
 life. I also cited M. Desnoyers' comments on the absence 
 among the bones of wild and domestic animals found in old 
 Gaulish tombs of all intermixture of extinct species of qua 
 drupeds, as proving that the oldest sepulchral monuments 
 then known in France (1845) had no claims to high antiquity 
 founded on palseontological data. 
 
 M. Lartet, however, has recently published a circumstantial 
 account of what seems clearly to have been a sepulchral vault 
 of the post-pliocene period, near Aurignac, not far from the 
 foot of the Pyrenees. I have had the advantage of inspect 
 ing the fossil bones and works of art obtained by him from 
 that grotto, and of conversing and corresponding with him 
 on the subject, and can see no grounds for doubting the sound 
 ness of his conclusions.* 
 
 The town of Aurignac is situated in the department of the 
 Haute Graronne, near a spur of the Pyrenees ; adjoining it is 
 the small flat-topped hill of Fajoles, about sixty feet above 
 the brook called Eodes, which flows at its foot on one side. 
 It consists of nummulitic limestone, presenting a steep escarp 
 ment towards the north-west, on which side in the face of the 
 
 * See Lartet, Annales des Mines, in Natural History Eeview, London, 
 Zoologie, torn. xv. p. 177, translated January 1862. 
 
182 SECTION OF SEPULCHRAL GROTTO AT AURIGNAC. CHAP. x. 
 
 rock, about forty-five feet above the brook, is now visible the 
 entrance of a grotto, a, fig. 25, which opened originally on the 
 terrace h, c, k, which slopes gently towards the valley. 
 
 Fig. 25 
 
 Section of part of the hill of Fajoles passing through the sepulchral grotto of 
 Aurignac (E. Lartet). 
 
 a Part of the vault in which the remains of seventeen human skeletons 
 were found. 
 
 b Layer of made ground, two feet thick, inside the grotto in which a few 
 human bones, with entire bones of extinct and living species of ani 
 mals, and many works of art were embedded. 
 
 c Layers of ashes and charcoal, eight inches thick, with broken, burnt, and 
 gnawed bones of extinct and recent mammalia; also hearth-stones 
 and works of art ; no human bones. 
 
 d Deposit with similar contents and a few scattered cinders. 
 
 e Talus of rubbish washed down from the hill above. 
 
 /, g Slab of rock which closed the vault, not ascertained whether it ex 
 tended to h. . 
 
 /, i Eabbit burrow which led to the discovery of the grotto. 
 
 h, Jc Original terrace on which the grotto opened. 
 
 N Nummulitic limestone of hill of Fajoles. 
 
 Until the year 1852, the opening into this grotto was 
 masked by a talus of small fragments of limestone and earthy 
 
CHAP. x. DISCOVERY OF HUMAN BONES. 183 
 
 matter, e, such as the rain may have washed down the slope 
 of the hill. In that year a labourer named Bonnemaison, 
 employed in repairing the roads, observed that rabbits, when 
 hotly pursued by the sportsman, ran into a hole which they 
 had burrowed in the talus, at i /, fig. 25. On reaching as far 
 into the opening as the length of his arm, he drew out, to 
 his surprise, one of the long bones of the human skeleton ; and 
 his curiosity being excited, and having a suspicion that the 
 hole communicated with a subterranean cavity, he commenced 
 digging a trench through the middle of the talus, and in a 
 few hours found himself opposite a large heavy slab of rock 
 / h, placed vertically against the entrance. Having removed 
 this, he discovered on the other side of it an arched cavity, a, 
 seven or eight feet in its greatest height, ten in width, and 
 seven in horizontal depth. It was almost filled with bones, 
 among which were two entire skulls, which he recognised at once 
 as human. The people of Aurignac, astonished to hear of the 
 occurrence of so many human relics in so lonely a spot, flocked 
 to the cave, and Dr. Amiel, the Mayor, ordered all the bones 
 to be taken out and reinterred in the parish cemetery. But 
 before this was done, having as a medical man a knowledge 
 of anatomy, he ascertained by counting the homologous 
 bones that they must have formed parts of no less than seven 
 teen skeletons of both sexes, and all ages; some so young that 
 the ossification of some of the bones was incomplete. He also 
 remarked that the size of the adults was such as to imply 
 a race of small stature. Unfortunately the skulls were 
 injured in the transfer ; and what is worse, after the lapse of 
 eight years, when M. Lartet visited Aurignac, the village 
 sexton was unable to tell him in what exact place the trench 
 was dug, into which the skeletons had been thrown, so that 
 this rich harvest of ethnological knowledge seems for ever lost 
 to the antiquary and geologist. 
 
 M. Lartet having been shown, in 1860, the remains of some 
 
184 WORKS OF ART FOUND OUTSIDE THE GROTTO. CHAP. x. 
 
 extinct animals and works of art, found in digging the 
 original trench made by Bonnemaison through the bed d 
 under the talus, and some others brought out from the interior 
 of the grotto, determined to investigate systematically what 
 remained intact of the deposits outside and inside the vault, 
 those inside, underlying the human skeletons, being supposed 
 to consist entirely of made ground. Having obtained the 
 assistance, of some intelligent workmen, he personally super 
 intended their labours, and found outside the grotto, resting 
 on the sloping terrace h k, the layer of ashes and charcoal 
 c, about seven inches thick, extending over an area of six 
 or seven square yards, and going as far as the entrance 
 of the grotto and no farther, there being no cinders or 
 charcoal in the interior. Among the cinders outside the 
 vault were fragments of fissile sandstone, reddened by heat, 
 which were observed to rest on a levelled surface of nummu- 
 litic limestone and to have formed a hearth. The nearest 
 place from whence such slabs of sandstone could have been 
 brought was the opposite side of the valley. 
 
 Among the ashes, and in some overlying earthy layers, d, 
 separating the ashes from the talus e, were a great variety 
 of bones and implements ; amongst the latter not fewer 
 than a hundred flint articles knives, projectiles, sling 
 stones, and chips, and among them one of those siliceous 
 cores or nuclei with numerous facets, from which flint flakes 
 or knives had been struck off, seeming to prove that 
 some instruments were occasionally manufactured on the 
 very spot. 
 
 Among other articles outside the entrance was found a 
 stone of a circular form, and flattened on two sides, with a 
 central depression, composed of a tough rock which does not 
 belong to that region of the Pyrenees. This instrument is 
 supposed by the Danish antiquaries to have been used for re 
 moving by skilful blows the edges of flint knives, the 
 
CHAP. x. BONES OF MAMMALIA FOUND AT AURIGNAC. 185 
 
 fingers and thumb being placed in the two opposite depressions 
 during the operation. Among the bone instruments were 
 arrows without barbs, and other tools made of rein-deer 
 horn, and a bodkin formed out of the more compact horn 
 of the roe-deer. This instrument was well shaped, and 
 sharply pointed, and in so good a state of preservation 
 that it might still be used for piercing the tough skins of 
 animals. 
 
 Scattered through the same ashes and earth were the 
 bones of the various species of animals enumerated in the 
 subjoined lists, with the exception of two, marked with 
 an asterisk, which only occurred in the interior of the 
 grotto : 
 
 1. CARNIVORA. 
 
 Number of individuals. 
 
 1. Ursus spel&us (cave-bear) 5 - - 6 
 
 2. Ursus Arctos ? (brown bear) . . 1 
 
 3. Meles Taxus (badger) 1 2 
 
 4. Putorius vulgaris (polecat) . . 1 
 5.*Felis spel&a (cave-lion) 1 
 
 6. Felis Catus ferus (wild cat) .... 1 
 
 7. Hyana spelcea (cave-hyaena) . . . .5 6 
 
 8. Canis Lupus (wolf) 3 
 
 9. Canis Vulpes (fox) U8 20 
 
 2. HERBIVORA. 
 
 1. Elephas primigenius (mammoth, two molars). 
 
 2. Ehinoceros tichorhinus (Siberian rhinoceros) . 1 
 
 3. Equus Cabcdlus (horse) 12 15 
 
 4. Equus Asinus ? (ass) 1 
 
 5.*Sus Scrofa (pig, two incisors). 
 
 6. Cervus Elephas (stag) 1 
 
 7. Megaceros hybernicus (gigantic Irish deer) . . 1 
 
 8. G. Capreolus (roebuck) 3 4 
 
 9. C. Tarandus (reindeer) 10 12 
 
 10. Bison europ&us (aurochs) 12 15 
 
 The bones of the herbivora were the most numerous, and 
 all those on the outside of the grotto which had contained 
 marrow were invariably split open, as if for its extraction, many 
 
186 THE RHINOCEROS TICHORINUS EATEN BY MAN. CHAP. x. 
 
 of them being also burnt. The spongy parts/ moreover, 
 were wanting, having been eaten off and gnawed after they 
 were broken, the work, according to M. Lartet, of hyaenas, 
 the bones and coprolites of which were plentifully mixed with 
 the cinders, and dispersed through the overlying soil d. These 
 beasts of prey are supposed to have prowled about the spot 
 and fed on such relics of the funeral feasts as remained after 
 the retreat of the human visitors, or during the intervals 
 between successive funeral ceremonies which accompanied 
 the interment of the corpses within the sepulchre. Many of 
 the bones were also streaked, as if the flesh had been scraped 
 off by a flint instrument. 
 
 Among the various proofs that the bones were fresh when 
 brought to the spot, it is remarked that those of the herbivora 
 not only bore the marks of having had the marrow extracted 
 and having afterwards been gnawed and in part devoured as if 
 by carnivorous beasts, but that they had also been acted upon 
 by fire (and this was especially noticed in one case of a 
 cave-bear's bone), in such a manner as to show that they 
 retained in them at the time all their animal matter. 
 
 Among other quadrupeds which appear to have been eaten 
 at the funeral feasts, and of which the bones occurred among 
 the ashes, were those of a young Rhinoceros tichorhinus, the 
 bones of which had been split open for the extraction of the 
 marrow, and gnawed by a beast of prey at both extremities. 
 
 Outside of the great slab of stone forming the door, 
 not one human bone occurred ; inside of it there were found, 
 mixed with loose soil, the remains of as many as seventeen 
 human individuals, besides some works of art and bones of 
 animals. We know nothing of the arrangement of these 
 bones when they were first broken into. M. Lartet infers, 
 from the small height and dimensions of the vault, that the 
 bodies were bent down upon themselves in a squatting atti 
 tude, a posture known to have been adopted in most of the 
 sepulchres of primitive times ; and he has so represented them 
 
CHAP. x. WORKS OF ART FOUND IN THE GROTTO. 187 
 
 in his restoration of the cave. His artist also has inad 
 vertently, in the same drawing, delineated the arched grotto 
 as if it were shaped very regularly and smoothly, like a finished 
 piece of masonry, whereas the surface was in truth as uneven 
 and irregular as are the roofs of all natural grottos. 
 
 There was no stalagmite in the grotto, and M. Lartet, an 
 experienced investigator of ossiferous caverns in the south of 
 France, came to the conclusion that all the bones and soil 
 found in the inside were artificially introduced. The sub 
 stratum, 6, fig. 25, which remained after the skeletons had 
 been removed, was about two feet thick. In it were found 
 about ten detached human bones, including a molar tooth ; 
 and M. Delesse ascertained by careful analysis of one of these, 
 as well as of the bones of a rhinoceros, bear, and some other 
 extinct animals, that they all contained precisely the same 
 proportion of azote, or had lost an equal quantity of their 
 animal matter. My friend Mr. Evans, before cited, has sug 
 gested to me that such a fact, taken alone, may not be con 
 clusive in favour of the equal antiquity of the human and 
 other remains, although it has no doubt an important bearing 
 on the case, because, had the human skeletons been found to 
 contain less gelatine than those of the extinct mammalia, it 
 would have shown that they were the more modern of the 
 two. But it is possible that after a bone has gone on 
 losing its animal matter up to a certain point, it may then 
 part with no more so long as it continues enveloped in the 
 same matrix, so that if all the bones have lain for many thou 
 sands of years in a particular soil, they may all have reached 
 long ago the maximum of decomposition attainable in such a 
 matrix. In the present case, however, the proof of the con 
 temporaneousness of man and the extinct animals does not 
 depend simply on the identity of their mineral condition. 
 The chemical analysis of M. Delesse is only a fact in corro- 
 boration of a great mass of other evidence. 
 
 Mixed with the human bones inside the grotto first re- 
 
188 WORKS OF ART FOUND IN THE GROTTO. CHAP. x. 
 
 moved by Bonnemaison, were eighteen small, round, and flat 
 plates of a white shelly substance, made of some species of 
 cockle (Cardium), pierced through the middle as if for being 
 strung into a bracelet. In the substratum also in the interior 
 examined by M. Lartet was found the tusk of a young Ursus 
 spelceus, the crown of which had been stripped of its enamel, 
 and which had been carved perhaps in imitation of the head 
 of a bird. It was perforated lengthwise as if for suspension 
 as an ornament or amulet. A flint knife also was found in 
 the interior which had evidently never been used; in this 
 respect, unlike the numerous worn specimens found outside, 
 so that it is conjectured that it may, like other associated 
 works of art, have been placed there as part of the funeral 
 ceremonies. 
 
 A few teeth of the cave-lion, Felis spelcea, and two tusks of 
 the wild boar, also found in the interior, were memorials 
 perhaps of the chase. No remains of the same animals were 
 met with among the external relics. 
 
 On the whole, the bones of animals inside the vault offer a 
 remarkable contrast to those of the exterior, being all entire 
 and uninjured, none of them broken, gnawed, half-eaten, 
 scraped or burnt like those lying among the ashes on the 
 other side of the great slab which formed the portal. The 
 bones of the interior seem to have been clothed with their 
 flesh, when buried in the layer of loose soil strewed over the 
 floor. In confirmation of this idea, many bones of the 
 skeleton were often observed to be in juxta-position, and in 
 one spot nearly all the bones of an Ursus spelceus were lying 
 together uninjured. Add to this, the entire absence in the 
 interior of cinders and charcoal, and we can scarcely doubt that 
 we have here an example of an ancient place of sepulture, 
 closed at the opening so effectually against the hysenas or 
 other carnivora that no marks of their teeth appear on any of 
 the bones, whether human or brute. 
 
 
CHAP. x. FUNERAL EITES OF INDIANS. 189 
 
 John Carver, in his travels in the interior of North" America 
 in 1766-68 (ch. xv.), gave a minute account of the funeral 
 rites of an Indian tribe, which inhabited the country now 
 called Iowa, at the junction of the St. Peter's Eiver with the 
 Mississippi ; and Schiller, iD his famous ' Nadowessische 
 Todtenklage,' has faithfully embodied in a poetic dirge all 
 the characteristic features of the ceremonies so graphically 
 described by the English traveller, not omitting the many 
 funeral gifts which, we are told, were placed c in a cave' 
 with the bodies of the dead. The lines beginning, ' Bringet 
 her die letzten Graben,' have been thus translated, truth 
 fully, and with all the spirit of the original, by Sir E. L. 
 Bulwer * 
 
 ' Here bring the last gifts ! and with these 
 
 The last lament be said ; 
 Let all that pleased, and yet may please, 
 Be buried with the dead. 
 
 ' Beneath his head the hatchet hide, 
 
 That he so stoutly swung ; 
 And place the bear's fat haunch beside 
 The journey hence is long ! 
 
 ' And let the knife new sharpened be 
 
 That on the battle-day 
 
 Shore with quick strokes he took but three 
 The foeman's scalp away ! 
 
 ' The paints that warriors love to use, 
 
 Place here within his hand, 
 That he may shine with ruddy hues 
 Amidst the spirit-land.' 
 
 If we accept M. Lartet's interpretation of the ossiferous de 
 posits of Aurignac, both inside and outside the grotto, they 
 add nothing to the palseontological evidence in favour of 
 man's antiquity, for we have seen all the same mammalia 
 associated elsewhere with flint implements, and some species, 
 such as the Elephas antiquus, Rhinoceros hemitcechus, and 
 Hippopotamus major, missing here, have been met with in 
 
 * Poems and Ballads of Schiller. 
 
190 RELATIVE ANTIQUITY OF AURIGNAC FOSSILS. CHAP. x. 
 
 other places. An argument, however, having an opposite 
 leaning may perhaps be founded on the phenomena of 
 Aurignac. It may, indeed it has been said, that they imply 
 that some of the extinct mammalia survived nearly to our 
 times. 
 
 Fi rs t ? Because of the modern style of the works of art 
 at Aurignac. 
 
 Secondlv, Because of the absence of any signs of change 
 in the physical geography of the country since the cave was 
 used for a place of sepulture. 
 
 In reference to the first of these propositions, the utensils, 
 it is said, of bone and stone indicate a more advanced state of 
 the arts than the flint implements of Abbeville and Amiens. 
 M. Lartet, however, is of opinion that they do not, and thinks 
 that we have no right to assume that the fabricators of the 
 various spear-headed and other tools of the Valley of the 
 Somme possessed no bone instruments or ornaments resem 
 bling those discovered at Aurignac. These last, moreover, 
 he regards as extremely rude in comparison with others of the 
 stone period in France, which can be proved palseontologically, 
 at least by strong negative evidence, to be of subsequent date. 
 Thus, for example, at Savigne, near Civray, in the department 
 of Vienne, there is a cave in which there are no extinct mam 
 malia, but where remains of the rein-deer abound. The 
 works of art of the stone period found there indicate con 
 siderable progress in skill beyond that attested by the objects 
 found in the Aurignac grotto. Among the Savigne articles, 
 there is a stag's horn, on which figures of two animals, ap 
 parently meant for deer, are engraved in outline, as if by a 
 sharp-pointed flint. In another cave, that of Massat, in the 
 department of Arriege, which M. Lartet ascribes to the period 
 of the aurochs, a quadruped which survived the rein-deer in 
 the south of France, there are bone instruments of a still more 
 advanced state of the arts, as, for example, barbed arrows 
 
CHAP. X. RELATIVE ANTIQUITY OF AURIGNAC FOSSILS. 191 
 
 with a small canal in each, believed to have served for the 
 insertion of poison ; also a needle of bird's bone, finely shaped, 
 with an eye or perforation at one end, and a stag's horn, on 
 which is carved a representation of a bear's head, and a hole 
 at one end as if for suspending it. In this figure we see, says 
 M. Lartet, what may perhaps be the earliest known example 
 of lines used to express shading. 
 
 The fauna of the aurochs (Bison europceus) agrees with 
 that of the earlier lake dwellings in Switzerland, in which 
 hitherto the rein-deer is wanting ; whereas the rein-deer has 
 been found in a Swiss cave, in Mont Saleve, supposed by 
 Lartet to be more ancient than the lake dwellings. 
 
 According to this view, the mammalian fauna has undergone 
 at least two fluctuations since the remains of some extinct 
 quadrupeds were eaten, and others buried as funeral gifts 
 in the sepulchral vault of Aurignac. 
 
 As to the absence of any marked changes in the physical 
 configuration of the district since the same grotto was a place 
 of sepulture, we must remember that it is the normal state 
 of the earth's surface to be undergoing great alterations in 
 one place, while other areas, often in close proximity, remain 
 for ages without any modification. In one region, rivers 
 are deepening and widening their channels, or the waves 
 of the sea are undermining cliffs, or the land is sinking 
 beneath or rising above the waters, century after century, or 
 the volcano is pouring forth torrents of lava or showers of 
 ashes ; while, in tracts -hard by, the ancient forest, or extensive 
 heath, or the splendid city continue scatheless and motionless. 
 Had the talus which concealed from view the ancient hearth 
 with its cinders and the massive stone portal of the Aurignac 
 grotto escaped all human interference for thousands of years 
 to come, there is no reason to suppose that the small stream 
 at the foot of the hill of Fajoles would have undermined it. 
 At the end of a long period the only alteration might have 
 
192 EELATIVE ANTIQUITY OF AURIGNAC FOSSILS. CHAP. x. 
 
 been the thickening of the talus which protected the loose 
 cinders and bones from waste. We behold in many a valley 
 of Auvergne, within fifty feet of the present river channel, a 
 volcanic cone of loose ashes, with a crater at its summit, from 
 which powerful currents of basaltic lava have poured, usurping 
 the ancient bed of the torrent. By the action of the stream, 
 in the course of ages, vast masses of the hard columnar basalt 
 have been removed, pillar after pillar, and much vesicular 
 lava, as in the case, for example, of the Puy Eouge, near 
 Chalucet, and of the Puy de Tartar et, near Nechers.* The 
 rivers have even in some cases, as the Sioule, near Chalucet, 
 cut through not only the basalt which dispossessed them of 
 their ancient channels, but have actually eaten fifty feet into 
 the subjacent gneiss ; yet the cone, an incoherent heap of 
 scoria3 and spongy ejectamenta, stands unmolested. Had the 
 waters once risen, even for a day, so high as to reach the 
 level of the base of one of these cones had there been a single 
 flood fifty or sixty feet in height since the last eruption oc 
 curred, a great part of these volcanoes must inevitably have 
 been swept away as readily as all traces of the layer of cinders ; 
 and the accompanying bones would have been obliterated by 
 the Rodes near Aurignac, had it risen, since the days of the 
 mammoth, rhinoceros, and cave-bear, fifty feet above its 
 present level. 
 
 The Aurignac cave adds no new species to the list of 
 extinct quadrupeds, which we have elsewhere, and by inde 
 pendent evidence, ascertained to have once flourished con 
 temporaneously with man. But if the fossil memorials have 
 been correctly interpreted if we have here before us at the 
 northern base of the Pyrenees a sepulchral vault with 
 skeletons of human beings, consigned by friends and 
 relatives to their last resting-place if we have also at the 
 
 * Scrope's Volcanoes of Central France, p. 97, 1858. 
 
CHAP. x. BURIAL RITES OF POST-PLIOCENE PERIOD. 193 
 
 portal of the tomb the relics of funeral feasts, and within it 
 indications of viands destined for the use of the departed on 
 their way to a land of spirits ; while among the funeral gifts 
 are weapons wherewith in other fields to chase the gigantic 
 deer, the cave-lion, the cave-bear, and woolly rhinoceros, we 
 have at last succeeded in tracing back the sacred rites of 
 burial, and, more interesting still, a belief in a future state, 
 to times long anterior to those of history and tradition. 
 Rude and superstitious as may have been the savage of that 
 remote era, he still deserved, by cherishing hopes of a here 
 after, the epithet of ' noble,' which Dryden gave to what he 
 seems to have pictured to himself as the primitive condition 
 of our race : 
 
 ' as Nature first made man 
 When wild in woods the noble savage ran.' * 
 
 Siege of Granada, Part I., act i. scene 1. 
 
194 HUMAN FOSSILS OF LE PUT AND NATCHEZ. CHAP xi. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 AGE OF HUMAN FOSSILS OF LE PUT IN CENTRAL FRANCE AND 
 OF NATCHEZ ON THE MISSISSIPPI, DISCUSSED. 
 
 QUESTION AS TO THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE FOSSIL MAN OF DENISE, 
 
 NEAR LE PUY-EN-VELAY, CONSIDERED ANTIQUITY OF THE HUMAN 
 
 RACE IMPLIED BY THAT FOSSIL SUCCESSIVE PERIODS OF VOLCANIC 
 
 ACTION IN CENTRAL FRANCE WITH WHAT CHANGES IN THE MAM 
 MALIAN FAUNA THEY CORRESPOND THE ELEPHAS MERIDIONALIS 
 
 ANTERIOR IN TIME TO THE IMPLEMENT-BEARING GRAVEL OF ST. ACHEUL 
 
 AUTHENTICITY OF THE HUMAN FOSSIL OF' NATCHEZ ON THE MISSIS 
 SIPPI, DISCUSSED THE NATCHEZ DEPOSIT, CONTAINING BONES OF MAS 
 TODON AND MEGALONYX, PROBABLY NOT OLDER THAN THE FLINT 
 IMPLEMENTS OF ST. ACHEUL. 
 
 AMONG- the fossil remains of the human species supposed 
 to have claims to high antiquity, and which have for 
 many years attracted attention, two of the most prominent 
 examples are 
 
 First, f The fossil man of Denise,' comprising the re 
 mains of more than one skeleton, found in a volcanic breccia 
 near the town of Le Puy-en-Velay, in Central France. 
 
 Secondly, The fossil human bone of Natchez, on the Mis 
 sissippi, supposed to have been derived from a deposit con 
 taining remains of mastodon and megalonyx. Having 
 carefully examined the sites of both of these celebrated fossils, 
 I shall consider in this chapter the nature of the evidence on 
 which the remote date of their entombment is inferred. 
 
 Fossil Man of Denise, 
 
 An account of the fossil remains, so called, was first published 
 in 1844, by M. Aymard of Le Puy, a writer of deservedly 
 
CHAP. xi. FOSSIL MAN OF DENISE. 195 
 
 high authority both as a palaeontologist and archaeologist.* 
 M. Pictet, after visiting Le Puy and investigating the site 
 of the alleged discovery, was satisfied that the fossil bones 
 belonged to the period of the last volcanic eruptions of Velay ; 
 but expressly stated in his important treatise on palaeontology 
 that this conclusion, though it might imply that man had 
 coexisted with the extinct elephant, did not draw with it the 
 admission that the human race was anterior in date to the 
 filling of the caverns of France and Belgium with the bones 
 of extinct mammalia.f 
 
 At a meeting of the ' Scientific Congress ' of France, held 
 at Le Puy in 1856, the question of the age of the Denise 
 fossil bones was fully gone into, and in the report of their 
 proceedings published in that year, the opinions of some of 
 the most skilful osteologists respecting the point in con 
 troversy are recorded. The late Abbe Croizet, a most 
 experienced collector of fossil bones in the volcanic regions 
 of Central France, and an able naturalist, and the late M. 
 Laurillard, of Paris, who assisted Cuvier in modelling many 
 fossil bones, and in the arrangement of the museum of the 
 Jardin, declared their opinion that the specimen preserved in 
 the museum of Le Puy is no counterfeit. They believed the 
 human bones to have been enveloped by natural causes in 
 the tufaceous matrix in which we now see them. 
 
 In the year 1859, Professor Hebert and M. Lartet visited 
 Le Puy, expressly to investigate the same specimen, and to 
 inquire into the authenticity of the bones and their geological 
 age. Later in the same year, I went myself to Le Puy, 
 having the same object in view, and had the good fortune to 
 meet there my friend Mr. Poulett Scrope, with whom I ex 
 amined the Montagne de Denise, where "a peasant related to 
 us how he had dug out the specimen with his own hands and 
 
 * Bulletin de la Societe Geologique f Trait6 de Paleontologie, torn. i. 
 
 de France, 1844, 1845, 1847. p. 152, 1853. 
 
 o 2 
 
196 AGE OF FOSSIL MAN OF DEMISE, CHAP. xi. 
 
 in his own vineyard, not far from the summit of the volcano. I 
 employed a labourer to make under his directions some fresh 
 excavations, following up those which had been made a month 
 earlier by MM. Hebert and Lartet, in the hope of verifying 
 the true position of the fossils, but all of us without success. 
 We failed even to find in situ any exact counterpart of the 
 stone of the Le Puy Museum. 
 
 The osseous remains of that specimen consist of a frontal 
 and some other parts of the skull, including the upper jaw 
 with teeth, both of an adult and young individual ; also a 
 radius, some lumbar vertebrae, and some metatarsal bones. 
 They are all embedded in a light porous tuff, resembling in 
 colour and mineral composition the ejectamenta of several of 
 the latest eruptions of Denise. But none of the bones pene 
 trate into another part of the same specimen, which consists 
 of a more compact rock thickly laminated. Nevertheless, I 
 agree with the Abbe Croizet and M. Aymard, that it is not 
 conceivable even that the less coherent part of the museum 
 specimen which envelopes the human bones should have been 
 artificially put together, whatever may have been the origin 
 of certain other slabs of tuff which were afterwards sold as 
 coming from the same place, and which also contained human 
 remains. Whether some of these were spurious or not is a 
 question more difficult to decide. One of them, now in the 
 possession of M. Pichot-Dumazel, an advocate of Le Puy, is 
 suspected of having had some plaster of Paris introduced into 
 it to bind the bones more firmly together in the loose vol 
 canic tuff. I was assured that a dealer in objects of natural 
 history at Le Puy had been in the habit of occasionally se 
 curing the cohesion in that manner of fragments of broken 
 bones, and the juxta-position of uninjured ones found free 
 and detachable in loose volcanic tuffs. From this to. the 
 fabrication of a factitious human fossil was, it is suggested, 
 but a short step. But in reference to M. Pichot's specimen, 
 
CHAP. xi. NEAK LE PUY-EN-VELAY. 197 
 
 an expert anatomist remarked to me that it would far exceed 
 the skill, whether of the peasant who owned the vineyard or 
 of the dealer above mentioned, to put together in their true 
 position all the thirty-eight bones of the hand and fingers, or 
 the sixteen of the wrist, without making any mistake, and 
 especially without mixing those of the right with the ho 
 mologous bones of the left hand, assuming that they had 
 brought bones, from some other spot, and then artificially 
 introduced them into a mixture of volcanic tuff and plaster 
 of Paris. 
 
 Granting, however, that the high prices given for ( human 
 fossils ' at Le Puy may have led to the perpetration of some 
 frauds, it is still an interesting question to consider whether 
 the admission of the genuineness of a single fossil, such as 
 that now in the museum at Le Puy, would lead us to assign 
 a higher antiquity to the existence of man in France than is 
 deducible from many other facts explained in the last seven 
 chapters. In reference to this point, I may observe, that 
 although I was not able to fix with precision the exact bed in 
 the volcanic mountain from which the rock containing the 
 human bones was taken, M. Felix Eobert has, nevertheless, 
 after studying ( the volcanic alluviums ' of Denise, ascer 
 tained that, on the side of Cheyrac and the village of 
 Malouteyre, blocks of tufif frequently occur exactly like the 
 one in the museum. That tuff he considers a product of 
 the latest eruption of the volcano. In it have been found 
 the remains of Hycena spelcea and Hippopotamus major. 
 The eruptions of steam and gaseous matter which burst 
 forth from the crater of Denise broke through laminated 
 
 o 
 
 tertiary clays, small pieces of which, some of them scarcely 
 altered, others half converted into scoriaB, were cast out 
 in abundance, while other portions must have been in a 
 state of argillaceous mud. Showers of such materials would 
 be styled by the Neapolitans '. aqueous lava ' or ' lava d' aqua,' 
 
198 VOLCANIC ACTION IN CENTRAL FRANCE. CHAP. XT. 
 
 and we may well suppose that some human individuals, 
 if any existed, would, together with wild animals, be occa 
 sionally overwhelmed in these tuffs. From near the place 
 on the mountain whence the block with human bones now 
 in the museum is said to have come, a stream of lava, well 
 marked by its tabular structure, flowed down the flanks of 
 the hill, within a few feet of the alluvial plain of the Borne, 
 a small tributary of the Loire, on the opposite bank of which 
 stands the town of Le Puy. Its continuous extension to so 
 low a level clearly shows that the valley had already been 
 deepened to within a few feet of its present depth at the time 
 of the flowing of the lava. 
 
 We know that the alluvium of the same district, having a 
 similar relation to the present geographical outline of the 
 valleys, is of post-pliocene date, for it contains around Le Puy 
 the bones of Elephas primigenius and Rhinoceros ticho- 
 rhinus ; and this affords us a palseontological test of the age of 
 the human skeleton of Denise, if the latter be assumed to be 
 coeval with the lava stream above referred to. 
 
 It is important to dwell on this point, because some geolo 
 gists have felt disinclined to believe in the genuineness of 
 the ' fossil man of Denise,' on the ground that, if conceded, 
 it would imply that the human race was contemporary with 
 an older fauna, or that of the Elephas meridionalis. Such a 
 fauna is found fossil in another layer of tuff covering the slope 
 of Denise, opposite to that where the museum specimen was 
 exhumed. The quadrupeds obtained from that more ancient 
 tuff comprise Elephas meridionalis, Hippopotamus major, 
 Rhinoceros megarhinus, Antilope torticornis, Hycena brevi- 
 rostris, and twelve others of the genera horse, ox, stag, goat, 
 tiger, &c., all supposed to be of extinct species. This tuff, 
 found between Malouteyre and Polignac, M. Robert regards 
 as the product of a much older eruption, and referable to the 
 neighbouring Montague de St. Anne, a volcano in a much 
 
CHAP. xi. CORRESPONDING MAMMALIAN FAUNA. 199 
 
 more wasted and denuded state than Denise, and classed by 
 M. Bertrand de Doue as of intermediate age between the 
 ancient and modern cones of Velay. 
 
 The fauna to which Elephas meridionalis and its associates 
 belong, can be shown to be of anterior date, in the north of 
 France, to the flint implements of St. Acheul, by the follow 
 ing train of reasoning. The Valley of the Seine is not only 
 geographically contiguous to the Valley of the Somme, but its 
 ancient alluvium contains the same mammoth and other 
 fossil species. The Eure, one of the tributaries of the Seine, 
 in its way to join that river, flows in a valley which follows 
 a line of fault in the chalk ; and this valley is seen to be 
 comparatively modern, because it intersects at St. Prest, four 
 miles below Chartres, an older valley belonging to an anterior 
 system of drainage, and which has been filled by a more 
 ancient fluviatile alluvium, consisting of sand and gravel, 
 ninety feet thick. I have examined the site of this older drift, 
 and the fossils have been determined by Dr. Falconer. They 
 comprise Elephas meridionalis, a species of rhinoceros (not 
 R. tichorhinus), and other mammalia differing from those 
 of the implement-bearing gravels of the Seine and Somme. 
 The latter, belonging to the period of the mammoth, 
 might very well have been contemporary with the modern vol 
 canic eruptions of Central France ; and we may presume, even 
 without the aid of the Denise fossil, that man may have wit 
 nessed these. But the tuffs and gravels in which the Elephas 
 meridionalis are embedded were synchronous with an older 
 epoch of volcanic action, to which the cone of St. Anne, near 
 Le Puy, and many other mountains of M. Bertrand de Doue's 
 middle period belong, having cones and craters, which have 
 undergone much waste by aqueous erosion. We have as 
 yet no proof that man witnessed the origin of these hills of 
 lava and scoriae of the middle phase of volcanic action. 
 
 Some surprise was expressed in 1856, by several of the 
 
200 HUMAN FOSSIL OF NATCHEZ. CHAP. XT. 
 
 assembled naturalists at Le Puy, that the skull of the c fossil 
 man of Denise,' although contemporary with the mammoth, 
 and coeval with the last eruptions of the Le Puy volcanoes, 
 should be of the ordinary Caucasian or European type ; but 
 the observations of Professor Huxley on the Engis skull, 
 cited in the fifth chapter, showing the near approach of that 
 ancient cranium to the European standard, will help to 
 remove this source of perplexity. 
 
 Human Fossil of Natchez on the Mississippi. 
 
 I have already alluded to Dr. Bowler's attempt to calculate, 
 in years, the antiquity of the human skeleton said to have 
 been buried under four cypress forests in the delta of the 
 Mississippi, near New Orleans (see page 43). In that case 
 no remains of extinct animals were found associated with 
 those of man : but in another part of the basin of the 
 Mississippi, a human bone, accompanied by bones of the 
 mastodon and megalonyx, is supposed to have been washed 
 out of a more ancient alluvial deposit. 
 
 After visiting the spot in 1846, I described the geological 
 position of the bones, and discussed their probable age, with 
 
 Fig. 26 
 
 1 Modern alluvium of the Mississippi. 2 Loam or loess. 
 
 3, / Eocene. 4 Cretaceous. 
 
 a stronger bias, I must confess, as to the antecedent improba 
 bility of the contemporaneous entombment of man and 
 the mastodon than any geologist would now be justified in 
 entertaining. 
 
 In the latitude of Vicksburg 32 50' N., the broad, flat, 
 alluvial plain of the Mississippi, a b, fig. 26, is bounded on 
 
CHAP. XI. SHELLS OF THE NATCHEZ DEPOSIT. 201 
 
 its eastern side by a table-land, d e, about two hundred feet 
 higher than the river, and extending twelve miles eastward 
 with a gentle upward slope. This elevated platform ends 
 abruptly at d, in a line of perpendicular cliffs or bluffs, the 
 base of which is continually undermined by the great river. 
 
 The table-land, d e, consists at Vicksburg, through which 
 the annexed section, fig. 26, passes, of loam, overlying the 
 tertiary strata, //. Between the loam and the tertiary for 
 mation there is usually a deposit of stratified sand and 
 gravel, containing large fragments of silicified corals and 
 the wreck of older palaeozoic rocks. The age of this inter 
 vening drift, which is one hundred and forty feet thick at 
 Natchez, has not yet been determined ; but it may possibly 
 belong to the glacial period. Natchez is about eighty miles in 
 a straight line south of Vicksburg, on the same left bank of 
 the Mississippi. Here there is a bluff, the upper sixty feet 
 of which consists of a continuous portion of the same calcareous 
 loam as at Vicksburg, equally resembling the Ehenish loess 
 in mineral character and in being sometimes barren of fossils, 
 sometimes so full of them that bleached land-shells stand 
 out conspicuously in relief in the vertical and weathered 
 face of cliffs which form the banks of streams, everywhere 
 intersecting the loam. 
 
 So numerous are the shells that I was able to collect at 
 Natchez, in a few hours, in 1846, no less than twenty species 
 of the genera Helix, Helicina, Pupa, Cydostoma, Achatina, 
 and Succinea, all identical with shells now living in the same 
 country ; and in one place I observed (as happens also occa 
 sionally in the valley of the Ehine) a passage of the loam 
 with land-shells into an underlying marly deposit of sub 
 aqueous origin, in which shells of the genera Limnea, 
 Planorbis, Paludina, Physa, and Cyclas, were embedded, 
 also consisting of recent American species. Such deposits, 
 more distinctly stratified than the loam . containing land- 
 
202 HUMAN FOSSIL OF NATCHEZ. CHAP. xi. 
 
 shells, are produced, as before stated, p. 129, in all great 
 alluvial plains, where the river shifts its position, and where 
 marshes, ponds, and lakes are formed in its old deserted 
 channels. In this part of America, however, it may have 
 happened that some of these lakes were caused by partial 
 subsidences, such as were witnessed, during the earthquakes 
 of 1811-12, around New Madrid, in the valley of the 
 Mississippi. 
 
 Owing to the destructible nature of the yellow loam, d e, 
 fig. 26, every streamlet flowing over the platform has 
 cut for itself, in its way to the Mississippi, a deep gully or 
 ravine ; and this erosion has of late years, especially since 1812, 
 proceeded with accelerated speed, ascribable in some degree 
 to the partial clearing of the native forest, but partly also to 
 the effects of the earthquake of 1811-12. By that con 
 vulsion the region around Natchez was rudely shaken and 
 much fissured. One of the narrow valleys near Natchez, due 
 to this fissuring, is now called the Mammoth Ravine. Though 
 no less than seven miles long, and in some parts sixty feet 
 deep, I was assured by a resident proprietor, Colonel Wiley, 
 that it had no existence before 1812. With its numerous 
 ramifications, it is said to have been entirely formed since 
 the earthquake at New Madrid. Before that event, Colonel 
 Wiley had ploughed some of the land exactly over a spot 
 now traversed by part of this water-course. 
 
 I satisfied myself that the ravine had been considerably en 
 larged and lengthened a short time before my visit, and it 
 was then freshly undermined and undergoing constant waste. 
 From a clayey deposit immediately below the yellow loam, 
 bones of the Mastodon ohioticus, a species of megalonyx, 
 bones of the genera Equus, Bos, and others, some of extinct 
 and others presumed to be of living species, had been 
 detached, and had fallen to the base of the cliffs. Mingled 
 with the rest, the pelvic bone of a man., os innominatum, 
 
CHAP. xr. AGE OF THE NATCHEZ DEPOSIT. 203 
 
 was obtained by Dr. Dickeson of Natchez, in whose collection 
 I saw it. It appeared to be quite in the same state of pre 
 servation, and was of the same black colour as the other 
 fossils, and was believed to have come like them from a depth 
 of about thirty feet from the surface. In my ( Second Visit 
 to America,' in 1846,* I suggested, as a possible explanation 
 of this association of a human bone with remains of a mastodon 
 and megalonyx, that the former may possibly have been 
 derived from the vegetable soil at the top of the cliff, whereas 
 the remains of extinct mammalia were dislodged from a lower 
 position, and both may have fallen into the same heap or talus 
 at the bottom of the ravine. The pelvic bone might, I con 
 ceived, have acquired its black colour by having lain for 
 years or centuries in a dark superficial peaty soil, common 
 in that region. I was informed that there were many human 
 bones, in old Indian graves in the same district, stained of as 
 black a die. On suggesting this hypothesis to Colonel Wiley, 
 of Natchez, I found that the same idea had already occurred 
 to his mind. No doubt, had the pelvic bone belonged to any 
 recent mammifer other than man, such a theory would never 
 have been resorted to; but so long as we have only one 
 isolated case, and are without the testimony of a geologist who 
 was present to behold the bone when still engaged in the matrix, 
 and to extract it with his own hands, it is allowable to suspend 
 our judgment as to the high antiquity of the fossil. 
 
 If, however, I am asked whether I consider the Natchez 
 loam, with land-shells and the bones of mastodon and 
 megalonyx, to be more ancient than the alluvium of the 
 Somme containing flint implements and the remains of the 
 mammoth and hyaena, I must declare that I do not. Both 
 in Europe and America the land and freshwater shells accom 
 panying the extinct pachyderms are of living species, and I 
 could detect no shell in the Natchez loam so foreign to the 
 
 * Vol. ii. p. 197. 
 
204 GREAT ANTIQUITY OF NATCHEZ LOAM. CHAP. xi. 
 
 basin of the Mississippi as is the Cyrena fluminalis to the 
 rivers of modern Europe. If, therefore, the relative ages of 
 the Picardy and Natchez alluvium were to be decided on 
 conchological data alone, the fluvio-marine beds of Abbeville 
 might rank as a shade older than the loess of Natchez. My 
 reluctance in 1846 to regard the fossil human bone as of post- 
 pliocene date arose in part from the reflection that the ancient 
 loess of Natchez is anterior in time to the whole modern 
 delta of the Mississippi. The table-land, d e, fig. 26, p. 200, 
 was, I believe, once a part of the original alluvial plain or 
 delta of the great river before it was upraised. It has now 
 risen more than two hundred feet above its pristine level. 
 After the upheaval, or during it, the Mississippi cut through 
 the old fluviatile formation of which its bluffs are now 
 formed, just as the Ehine has in many parts of its valley ex 
 cavated a passage through its ancient loess. If I was right 
 in calculating that the present delta of the Mississippi has 
 required, as a minimum of time, more than one hundred 
 thousand years for its growth,* it would follow, if the claims 
 of the Natchez man to have coexisted with the mastodon are 
 admitted, that North America was peopled more than a thou 
 sand centuries ago by the human race. But even were that 
 true, we could not presume, reasoning from ascertained 
 geological data, that the Natchez bone was anterior in data 
 to the antique flint hatchets of St. Acheul. When we ascend 
 the Mississippi from Natchez to Vicksburg, and then enter 
 the Ohio, we are accompanied everywhere by a continuous 
 fringe of terraces of sand and gravel at a certain height above 
 the alluvial plain, first of the great river, and then of its 
 tributary. We also find that the older alluvium contains the 
 remains of mastodon everywhere, and in some places, as at 
 Evansville, those of the megalonyx. As in the valley of the 
 Somme in Europe, those old post-pliocene gravels often occur 
 
 * See Principles of Geology. 
 
 
CHAT>. xi. AGE OF NATCHEZ FOSSIL MAN. 205 
 
 at more than one level, and the ancient mounds of the Ohio, 
 with their works of art, described at p. 39, are newer than 
 the old terraces of the mastodon period, just as the (rallo- 
 Koman tombs of St. Acheul or the Celtic weapons of the 
 Abbeville peat are more modern than the tools of the mam 
 moth-bearing alluvium. 
 
 In the first place, I may remind the reader that the vertical 
 movement of two hundred and fifty feet, required to elevate 
 the loess of Natchez to its present height, is exceeded by the 
 upheaval which the marine stratum of Cagliari, containing 
 pottery, has been ascertained by Count de la Marmora to have 
 experienced, p. 177. Such changes of level, therefore, have 
 actually occurred in Europe in the human epoch, and may 
 therefore have happened in America. In the second place, I 
 may observe that, if, since the Natchez mastodon was embedded 
 in clay, the delta of the Mississippi has been formed, so, since 
 the mammoth and rhinoceros of Abbeville and Amiens were 
 enveloped in fluviatile mud and gravel, together with flint 
 tools, a great thickness of peat has accumulated in the Valley 
 of the Somme ; and antecedently to the first growth of peat, 
 there had been time for the extinction of a great many mam 
 malia, requiring, perhaps, as shown at p. 144, a lapse of 
 ages many times greater than that demanded for the for 
 mation of thirty feet of peat, for since the earliest growth of 
 the latter there has been no change in the species of mammalia 
 in Europe. 
 
 Should future researches, therefore, confirm the opinion 
 that the Natchez man coexisted with the mastodon, it would 
 not enhance the value of the geological evidence in favour of 
 man's antiquity, but merely render the delta of the Mississippi 
 available as a chronometer, by which the lapse of post-pliocene 
 time could be measured somewhat less vaguely than by any 
 means of measuring which have as yet been discovered or 
 rendered available in Europe. 
 
206 CHRONOLOGICAL RELATIONS CHAP. x:i. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 ANTIQUITY OF MAN RELATIVELY TO THE GLACIAL PERIOD AND TO 
 THE EXISTING FAUNA AND FLORA. 
 
 CHRONOLOGICAL RELATION OF THE GLACIAL PERIOD, AND THE EARLIEST 
 KNOWN SIGNS OF MAN'S APPEARANCE IN EUROPE SERIES OF TERTIARY 
 DEPOSITS IN NORFOLK AND SUFFOLK IMMEDIATELY ANTECEDENT TO 
 
 THE GLACIAL PERIOD GRADUAL REFRIGERATION OF CLIMATE PROVED 
 
 BY THE MARINE SHELLS OF SUCCESSIVE GROUPS MARINE NEWER 
 
 PLIOCENE SHELLS OF NORTHERN CHARACTER, NEAR WOODBRIDGE . 
 
 SECTION OF THE NORFOLK CLIFFS NORWICH CRAG FOREST BED 
 
 AND FLUVIO-MARINE STRATA FOSSIL PLANTS AND MAMMALIA OF THE 
 
 SAME OVERLYING BOULDER CLAY AND CONTORTED DRIFT NEWER 
 
 FRESHWATER FORMATION OF MUNDESLEY COMPARED TO THAT OF 
 
 HOXNE GREAT OSCILLATIONS OF LEVEL IMPLIED BY THE SERIES OF 
 
 STRATA IN THE NORFOLK CLIFFS EARLIEST KNOWN DATE OF MAN 
 
 LONG SUBSEQUENT TO THE EXISTING FAUNA AND FLORA. 
 
 THEEQUENT allusions have been made in the preceding 
 J- pages to a period called the glacial, to which no refe 
 rence is made in the Chronological Table of Formations given 
 at p. 7. It comprises a long series of ages, chiefly of post- 
 tertiary date, during which the power of cold, whether exerted 
 by glaciers on the land, or by floating ice on the sea, was 
 greater in the northern hemisphere, and extended to more 
 southern latitudes than now. 
 
 It often happens that when in any given region we have 
 pushed back our geological investigations as far as we can, in 
 search of evidence of the first appearance of man in Europe, 
 we are stopped by arriving at what is called the e boulder 
 clay ' or * northern drift.' This formation is usually quite 
 destitute of organic remains, so that the thread of our in 
 quiry into the history of the animate creation, as well as of 
 man, is abruptly cut short. The interruption, however, is by 
 
CHAP. xil. OF THE GLACIAL AND HUMAN PERIODS. 207 
 
 no means encountered at the same point of time in every 
 district. In the case of the Danish peat, for example, we 
 get no farther back than the recent period of our Chrono 
 logical Table (p. 7), and then meet with the boulder clay ; 
 and it is the same in the valley of the Clyde, where the 
 marine strata contain the ancient canoes before described 
 (p. 47), and where nothing intervenes between that recent for 
 mation and the glacial drift. But we have seen that, in the 
 neighbourhood of Bedford (p. 155), the memorials of man can 
 be traced much farther back into the past, namely, into the 
 post-pliocene epoch, when the human race was contemporary 
 with the mammoth and many other species of mammalia 
 now extinct. Nevertheless, in Bedfordshire as in Denmark, 
 the formation next antecedent in date to that containing the 
 human implements is still a member of the glacial drift, 
 with its erratic blocks. 
 
 If the reader remembers what was stated in the Eighth 
 Chapter, p. 144, as to the absence or extreme scarcity of 
 human bones and works of art in all strata, whether marine 
 or fresh-water, even in those formed in the immediate prox 
 imity of land inhabited by millions of human beings, he will 
 be prepared for the general dearth of human memorials in 
 glacial formations, whether recent, post-pliocene, or of more 
 ancient date. If there were a few wanderers over lands 
 covered with glaciers, or over seas infested with ice-bergs, 
 and if a few of them left their bones or weapons in moraines 
 or in marine drift, the chances, after the lapse of thousands of 
 years, of a geologist meeting with one of them must be infini- 
 tesimally small. 
 
 It is natural, therefore, to encounter a gap in the. regular 
 sequence of geological monuments bearing on the past history 
 of man, wherever we have proofs of glacial action having 
 prevailed with intensity, as it has done over large parts of 
 Europe and North America, in the post-pliocene period. As 
 
208 INCREASING COLD SHOWN BY CHAP. xn. 
 
 we advance into more southern latitudes approaching the 
 50th parallel of latitude in Europe, and the 40th in North 
 America, this disturbing cause ceases to oppose a bar to our 
 inquiries ; but even then, in consequence of the fragmentary 
 nature of all geological annals, our progress is inevitably slow 
 in constructing any thing like a connected chain of history, 
 which can only be effected by bringing the links of the chain 
 found in one area to supply the information which is wanting 
 in another. 
 
 The least interrupted series of consecutive documents to 
 which we can refer in the British Islands, when we desire to 
 connect the tertiary with the post-tertiary periods, are found 
 in the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex ; and I shall 
 speak of them in this chapter, as they have a direct bearing 
 on the relations of the human and glacial periods, which will 
 be the subject of several of the following chapters. The 
 fossil shells of the deposits in question clearly point to a 
 gradual refrigeration of climate, from a temperature some 
 what warmer than that now prevailing in our latitudes to one 
 of intense cold ; and the successive steps which have marked 
 the coming on of the increasing cold are matters of no small 
 geological interest. 
 
 It will be seen in the Table at p. 7, that next before the 
 post-tertiary period stands the pliocene, divided into the 
 older and newer. The shelly and sandy beds representing 
 these periods in Norfolk and Suffolk are termed provincially 
 Crag, having under that name been long used in agriculture 
 to fertilise soils deficient in calcareous matter, or to render 
 them less stiff and impervious. In Suffolk, the older pliocene 
 strata called Crag are divisible into the Coralline and the 
 Eed Crags, the former being the older of the two. In Norfolk, 
 a more modern formation, commonly termed the 6 Norwich,' 
 or sometimes the < mammalif erous ' Crag, which is referable to 
 the newer pliocene period, occupies large areas. 
 
CHAP. XII. 
 
 NORFOLK AND SUFFOLK TERTIARIES. 
 
 209 
 
 We are indebted to Mr. Searles Wood, F.Gr.S., for an 
 admirable monograph on the fossil shells of these British 
 pliocene formations. He has not himself given us an ana 
 lysis of the results of his treatise, but the following tables have 
 been drawn up for me by Mr. S. P. Woodward, the well- 
 known author of the 6 Manual of the Mollusca, Eecent and 
 Fossil' (London, 1853-6), in order to illustrate some of the 
 general conclusions to which Mr. Wood's careful examination 
 of 442 species of mollusca has led. 
 
 Number of known Species of Marine Testacea in the three English 
 Pliocene Deposits, called the Norwich, the Red, and the Coralline 
 Crags. 
 
 Brachiopoda 
 
 Conchifera 
 
 Gasteropoda 
 
 Total 
 
 6 
 
 206 
 230 
 
 442 
 
 Distribution of the above Marine Testacea. 
 
 Number of Species. 
 
 Norwich Crag . . . .81 
 
 Bed Crag .... . . 225 
 
 Coralline Crag . . .327 
 
 Species common to the 
 Norwich and Ked Crag (not in Cor. ) 33 
 Norwich and Coralline ( not in Ked) 4 
 Ked and Coralline (not in Norwich) 116 
 Norwich, Ked, and Coralline . 19* 
 
 Proportion of Eecent to Extinct Species. 
 
 Recent. 
 Norwich Crag . . . .69 
 
 Ked Crag 130 
 
 Coralline Crag . . . .168 
 
 Extinct. 
 
 12 
 
 95 
 159 
 
 Per-centage of 
 
 Recent. 
 
 85 
 
 57 
 
 51 
 
 Recent Species not living now in British Seas. 
 
 Norwich Crag 
 Ked Crag 
 Coralline Crag 
 
 Northern Species. 
 . 12 
 . 8 
 
 2 
 
 Southern. 
 
 
 16 
 
 27 
 
 * These 19 species must be added to the numbers 33, 4, and 116 respectively 
 in order to obtain the full amount of common species in each of those cases. 
 
210 INCKEASING COLD SHOWN BY CHAP. xn. 
 
 In the above list I have not included the shells of the 
 glacial beds of the Clyde and of several other British deposits 
 of newer origin than the Norwich Crag, in which nearly all 
 perhaps all the species are recent. The land and fresh 
 water shells, thirty-two in number, have also been purposely 
 omitted, as well as three species of London Clay shells, sus 
 pected by Mr. Wood himself to be spurious. 
 
 By far the greater number of the recent marine species 
 included in these tables are still inhabitants of the British 
 seas ; but even these differ considerably in their relative 
 abundance, some of the commonest of the Crag shells being 
 now extremely scarce; as, for example, Buccinum Dalei, 
 and others, rarely met with in a fossil state, being now very 
 common, as Murex erinaceus and Cardium echinatum. 
 
 The last table throws light on a marked alteration in the 
 climate of the three successive periods. It will be seen that 
 in the Coralline Crag there are twenty-seven southern shells, 
 including twenty-six Mediterranean, and one West Indian 
 species (JErato Maugerice). Of these only thirteen occur in 
 the Eed Crag, associated with three new southern species, 
 while the whole of them disappear from the Norwich beds. 
 On the other hand, the Coralline Crag contains only two arctic 
 shells, Admete viridula and Limopsis pygmcea ; whereas 
 the Eed Crag contains, as stated in the table, eight northern 
 species, all of which recur in the Norwich Crag, with the 
 addition of four others, also inhabitants of the arctic regions ; 
 so that there is good evidence of a continual refrigeration of 
 climate during the pliocene period in Britain. The presence 
 of these northern shells cannot be explained away by sup 
 posing that they were inhabitants of the deep parts of the 
 sea; for some of them, such as Tellina calcarea and Astarte 
 borealis, occur plentifully, and sometimes with the valves 
 united by their ligament, in company with other littoral shells, 
 such as Mya arenaria and Littorina rudis, and evidently 
 
CHAP. xii. NORFOLK AND SUFFOLK TERTIAKIES. 211 
 
 not thrown up from deep water. Yet the northern character 
 of the Norwich Crag is not fully shown by simply saying that 
 it contains twelve northern species, now no longer found in 
 British seas, since several boreal shells which still linger in 
 the Scottish deeps do not abound there as they did in the 
 latter days of the Crag period. It is the predominance of 
 certain genera and species which satisfies the mind of a 
 conch ologist as to the arctic character of the Norwich Crag. 
 In like manner, it is the presence of such genera as Pyrula, 
 Columbella, Terebra, Cassidaria, Pholadomya, Lingula, 
 Discina, and others which give a southern aspect to the 
 Coralline Crag shells. 
 
 The cold, which had gone on increasing from the time of 
 the Coralline to that of the Norwich Crag, continued, though 
 not perhaps without some oscillations of temperature, to 
 become more and more severe after the accumulation of the 
 Norwich Crag, until it reached its maximum in what has been 
 called the glacial epoch. The marine fauna of this last 
 period contains, both in Ireland and Scotland, recent species 
 of mollusca now living in Greenland and other seas far north 
 of the areas where we find their remains in a fossil state. 
 
 The refrigeration of climate from the time of the older 
 to that of the newer Pliocene strata is not now announced 
 for the first time, as it was inferred from a study of the Crag 
 shells in 1846 by the late Edward Forbes.* 
 
 The most southern point to which the marine beds of the 
 Norwich Crag have yet been traced is at Chillesford, near 
 Woodb ridge, in Suffolk, about eighty miles north-east of 
 London, where, as Messrs. Prestwich and Searles Wood have 
 pointed out,f they exhibit decided marks of having been 
 deposited in a sea of a much lower temperature than that now 
 prevailing in the same latitude. Out of twenty-three shells 
 
 * Manual of Geological Survey, f Quarterly Geological Journal, 
 
 London, 1846, p. 391. 1849, vol. v. p. 345. 
 
 P 2 
 
212 CHILLESFOED ARCTIC SHELLS. CH.4P. xn. 
 
 obtained in that locality from argillaceous strata twenty feet 
 thick, two only, namely, Nucula Cobboldice and Tellina 
 obliqua, are extinct, and not a few of the other species, such 
 as Leda arctica, Cardium groenlandicum, Lucina borealis, 
 Cyprina islandica, Panopcea norvegica, and Mya truncata, 
 betray a northern, and some of them an arctic character. 
 
 These Chillesford beds are supposed to be somewhat more 
 modern than any of the purely marine strata of the Norwich 
 Crag exhibited by the sections of the Norfolk cliffs NW. of 
 Cromer, which I am about to describe. Yet they probably 
 preceded in date the ' Forest Bed ' and fluvio-marine deposits 
 of those same cliffs. They are, therefore, of no small im 
 portance in reference to the chronology of the glacial period, 
 since they afford evidence of an assemblage of fossil shells 
 with a proportion of between eight and nine in a hundred of 
 extinct species occurring so far south as lat. 53 N., and indi 
 cating so cold a climate as to imply that the glacial period 
 commenced before the close of the newer pliocene era. 
 
 The annexed section will give a general idea of the ordinary 
 succession of the newer pliocene and post-pliocene strata which 
 rest upon the chalk in the Norfolk and Suffolk cliffs. These 
 cliffs vary in height from fifty to above three hundred feet. 
 At the north-western extremity of the section at Weybourne 
 (beyond the limits of the annexed diagram), and from thence 
 to Cromer, a distance of seven miles, the Norwich crag, a marine 
 deposit, reposes immediately upon the chalk. A vast majority 
 of its shells are of living species now inhabiting the British 
 seas, such as Cardium edule, Cyprina islandica, and Scalaria 
 groenlandica, and some few extinct, as Fusus striatus, Tellina 
 obliqua^ and Nucula Cobboldice. At Cromer jetty this for 
 mation thins out, as expressed in the diagram at A ; and to the 
 south we find No. 3, or what is commonly called the ' Forest 
 Bed,' reposing immediately upon the chalk, and occupying as 
 it were the place previously held by the marine crag No. 2. 
 
<0 
 
 213 
 
 *:;;:: 
 
 o 
 
 iiiii C 
 
 s 
 
 
 &-$ 
 
 
 
 CO 
 
 co i^ 
 
214 SECTION OF NORFOLK CLIFFS. CHAF. xn. 
 
 This buried forest has been traced for more than forty miles, 
 being exposed at certain seasons and states of the beach 
 between high and low water mark. It extends from Cromer 
 to near Kessingland, and consists of the stumps of numerous 
 trees standing erect, with their roots attached to them, and 
 penetrating in all directions into the loam or ancient vegetable 
 soil on which they grew. They mark the site of a forest which 
 existed there for a long time, since, besides the erect trunks of 
 trees, some of them two and three feet in diameter, there is a 
 vast accumulation of vegetable matter in the immediately 
 overlying clays. Thirty years ago, when I first examined this 
 bed, I saw many trees, with their roots in the old soil, laid 
 open at the base of the cliff near Happisburgh ; and long 
 before my visit, other observers, and among them the late 
 Mr. J. C. Taylor, had noticed the buried forest. Of late 
 years it has been repeatedly seen at many points by 
 Mr. Grunn, and, after the great storms of the autumn of 1861, 
 by Mr. King. In order to expose the stumps to view, a vast 
 body of sand and shingle must be cleared away by the force 
 of the waves. 
 
 As the sea is always gaining on the land, new sets of trees 
 are brought to light from time to time, so that the breadth 
 as well as length of the area of ancient forest land seems to 
 have been considerable. Next above No. 2, we find a series 
 of sands and clays with lignite (No. 3'), sometimes ten feet 
 thick, and containing alternations of fluviatile and marine 
 strata, implying that the old forest land, which may at first 
 have been considerably elevated above the level of the sea, 
 had sunk down so as to be occasionally overflowed by a river, 
 and at other times by the salt waters of an estuary. There 
 were probably several oscillations of level which assisted in 
 bringing about these changes, during which trees were often 
 uprooted and laid prostrate, giving rise to layers of lignite. 
 Occasionally marshes were formed and peaty matter accumu- 
 
CHAP. xii. FOREST BED OF NORFOLK CLIFFS. 215 
 
 lated, after which salt water again predominated, so that 
 species of Mytilus, My a, Leda, and other marine genera, 
 lived in the same area where the Unio, Cyclas, and Paludina 
 had nourished for a time. That the marine shells lived and 
 died on the spot, an$ were not thrown up by the waves during 
 a storm, is proved, as Mr. King has remarked, by the fact 
 that at West Eunton, NW. of Cromer, the My a truncata 
 and Leda myalis are found with both valves united and 
 erect in the loam, all. with their posterior or siphun- 
 cular extremities uppermost. This attitude affords as good 
 evidence to the conchologist that those mollusca lived and 
 died on the spot as the upright position of the trees proves to 
 the botanist that there was a forest over the chalk east of 
 Cromer. 
 
 Between the stumps of the buried forest, and in the lignite 
 above them, are many well-preserved cones of the Scotch and 
 spruce firs, Pinus sylvestris, and Pinus Abies. The specific 
 names of these fossils were determined for me in 1840, by a 
 botanist of no less authority than the late Kobert Brown ; and 
 Professor Heer has lately examined a large collection from 
 the same stratum, and recognised among the cones of the 
 spruce some which had only the central part or axis remain 
 ing, the rest having been bitten off, precisely in the same 
 manner as when in our woods the squirrel has been feeding 
 on the seeds. There is also in the forest-bed a great quan 
 tity of resin in lumps, resembling that gathered for use, 
 according to Professor Heer, in Switzerland, from beneath 
 spruce firs. 
 
 The following is a list of some of the plants which were 
 collected by the Rev, S. Gr. King, in 1861, from the forest bed, 
 and named by Professor Heer : 
 
 Pinus sylvestris, Scotch fir . . Mundesley. 
 Pinus Abies , spruce fir ... 
 
216 FOSSIL PLANTS AND MAMMALIA CHAP. xii. 
 
 Taxus baccata, yew . . . Mundesley. 
 
 Prunus spinosa, common sloe . 
 
 Menyanthes trifoliata, buckbean . 
 
 Nymphcea alba, white water-lily . 
 
 Nuphar luteum, yellow water-lily . 
 
 Ceratophyllum demorsum, hornwort . 
 
 Potamogeton, pondweed ... 
 
 Alnus, alder . - . . . Bacton. 
 
 Quercus, oak .... 
 
 The insects, so far as they are known, including several 
 species of Donacea, are, like the plants and freshwater shells, 
 of living species. It may be remarked, however, that the 
 Scotch fir has been confined in historical times to the northern 
 parts of the British isles, and the spruce fir is nowhere in 
 digenous in Great Britain. The other plants are such as 
 might now be found in Norfolk, and many of them indicate 
 fenny or marshy ground. 
 
 When we consider the familiar aspect of the flora, the 
 accompanying mammalia are certainly most extraordinary. 
 There are no less than two elephants, a rhinoceros and 
 hippopotamus, a large extinct beaver, and several large 
 estuarian and marine mammalia, such as the walrus, the 
 narwhal, and the whale. 
 
 The following is a list of some of the species of which the 
 bones have been collected by Messrs. Gunn and King, and 
 named by Dr. Falconer and other geologists : 
 
 Mammalia of the Forest and Lignite Beds below the Glacial 
 Drift of the Norfolk Cliffs. 
 
 Elephas meridionalis. 
 Elephas primigenius var. 
 Elephas antiquus. 
 Eh >-nocero8 etruscus. 
 
CHAP. xil. OF NORFOLK CLIFFS. 217 
 
 Hippopotamus (major ?). 
 
 Sue. 
 
 Equus (fossilis ?). 
 
 Bos. 
 
 Cervus Capreolus ? and other species of Cervus. 
 
 Arvicola amphibia. 
 
 Castor trogontherium. 
 
 Castor europceus. 
 
 Narwhal, walrus, and large whale, or Balcenoptera ? 
 
 Mr. Gunn informs me that two large whales were found in 
 the fluvio-marine beds at Bacton, and that the vertebraB of 
 one of them, shown to Professor Owen, were said by him to 
 imply that the animal was sixty feet long. A narwhal's tusk 
 was discovered by Mr. King near Cromer, and the remains of 
 a walrus. No less than three species of elephant, as deter 
 mined by Dr. Falconer, have been obtained from the strata 
 3 and 3', of which, according to Mr. King, E. meridionalis 
 is the most common, the mammoth next in abundance, and 
 the third, E. antiquus, comparatively rare. 
 
 The freshwater shells accompanying the fossil quadrupeds, 
 above enumerated, are such as now inhabit rivers and ponds 
 in England ; but among them, as at Runton, between the 
 ( forest bed ' and the glacial deposits, a remarkable variety 
 of the Cydas amnica occurs, fig. 28, p. 218, identical with 
 that which accompanies the Elephas antiquus at Ilford and 
 Grays in the valley of the Thames. 
 
 All the freshwater shells of the beds intervening between 
 the forest-bed No. 3,' and the glacial formation 4, fig. 27, 
 are of recent species. As to the small number of marine 
 shells occurring in the same fluvio-marine series, I have seen 
 none which belonged to extinct species, although one or two 
 have been cited by authors. I am in doubt, therefore, 
 whether to class the forest bed and overlying strata as post- 
 
218 GLACIAL DEPOSITS CHAP. xn. 
 
 pliocene, or to consider them as beds of passage between the 
 newer pliocene and post-pliocene periods. The fluvio-marine 
 
 Fig. 28 
 
 Cyclas (Pisidium) amnica var. ? 
 The two middle figures are of the natural size. 
 
 series usually terminates upwards in finely laminated sands 
 and clays without fossils, on which reposes the boulder clay. 
 
 This formation, No. 4, is of very varying thickness. Its 
 glacial character is shown, not only by the absence of stratifi 
 cation, and the great size and angularity of some of the 
 included blocks of distant origin, but also by the polished 
 and scratched surfaces of such of them as are hard enough to 
 retain any markings. 
 
 Near Cromer, blocks of granite from six to eight feet in 
 diameter have been met with, and smaller ones of sienite, 
 porphyry, and trap, besides the wreck of the London clay, 
 chalk, oolite, and lias, mixed with more ancient fossiliferous 
 rocks. Erratics of Scandinavian origin occur chiefly in the 
 lower portions of the till. I came to the conclusion in 1834, 
 that they had really come from Norway and Sweden, after 
 having in that year traced the course of a continuous stream 
 of such blocks from those countries to Denmark, and across 
 the Elbe, through Westphalia, to the borders of Holland. 
 It is not surprising that they should then reappear on our 
 eastern coast between the Tweed and the Thames, regions not 
 half so remote from parts of Norway as are many Russian 
 erratics from the sources whence they came. 
 
 According to the observations of the Rev. J. Grunn and the 
 
CHAP. xii. OF NORFOLK CLIFFS. 219 
 
 late Mr. Trimmer, the glacial drift in the cliffs at Lowestoff 
 consists of two divisions, the lower of which abounds in the 
 Scandinavian blocks, supposed to have come from the 
 north-east ; while the upper, probably brought by a current 
 from the north-west, contains chiefly fragments of oolitic rocks, 
 more rolled than those of the lower deposit. The united 
 thickness of the two divisions without reckoning some 
 interposed laminated beds, is eighty feet, but it probably ex 
 ceeds one hundred feet near Happisburgh.* Although these 
 subdivisions of the drift may be only of local importance, they 
 help to show the changes of currents and other conditions, 
 and the great lapse of time which the accumulation of so 
 varied a series of deposits must have required. 
 
 The lowest part of the glacial till, resting on the laminated 
 clays before mentioned, is very even and regular, while its 
 upper surface is remarkable for the unevenness of its outline, 
 owing partly, in all likelihood, to denudation, but still more 
 to other causes presently to be discussed. 
 
 The overlying strata of sand and gravel, No. 5, p. 213, often 
 display a most singular derangement in their stratification, 
 which in many places seems to have a very intimate re 
 lation to the irregularities of outline in the subjacent till. 
 There are some cases, however, -where the upper strata are 
 much bent, while the lower beds of the same series have con 
 tinued horizontal. Thus the annexed section (fig. 29) 
 represents a cliff about fifty feet high, at the bottom of which 
 is till, or unstratified clay, containing boulders, having an 
 even horizontal surface, on which repose conformably beds of 
 laminated clay and sand about five feet thick, which, in their 
 turn, are succeeded by vertical, bent, and contorted layers of 
 sand and loam twenty feet thick, the whole being covered by 
 flint gravel. The curves of the variously coloured beds of 
 
 * Quarterly Geological Journal, vol. vii. p. 21. 
 
220 
 
 GLACIAL DEPOSITS 
 
 CHAP. XII. 
 
 loose sand, loam, and pebbles, are so complicated that not 
 only may we sometimes find portions of them which maintain 
 
 Fig. 29 
 
 Gravel 
 
 Till 
 
 Cliff 50 feet high between Bacton Gap and Mundesley. 
 
 their verticality to a height of ten or fifteen feet, but they 
 have also been folded upon themselves in such a manner 
 that continuous layers might be thrice pierced in one perpen 
 dicular boring. 
 
 At some points there is an apparent folding of the beds 
 round a central nucleus, as at a, fig. 30, where the strata seem 
 
 Fig. 31 
 
 Fig. 30 
 
 Folding of the strata between 
 East and West Kunton. 
 
 Section of concentric beds west of Cromer. 
 
 1 Blue clay. 3 Yellow sand. 
 
 2 White sand. 4 Striped loam and clay. 
 
 5 Laminated blue clay. 
 
 bent round a small mass of chalk, or, as in fig. 31, where the 
 blue clay, No. 1, is in the centre ; and where the other strata, 
 2, 3, 4, 5, are coiled round it ; the entire mass being twenty 
 
CHAP. XII. 
 
 OF NORFOLK CLIFFS. 
 
 221 
 
 feet in perpendicular height. This appearance of concentric 
 arrangement around a nucleus is, nevertheless, delusive, being 
 produced by the intersection of beds bent into a convex 
 shape ; and that which seems the nucleus being, in fact, the 
 innermost bed of the series, which has become partially visible 
 by the removal of the protuberant portions of the outer 
 layers. 
 
 To the north of Cromer are other fine illustrations of con 
 torted drift reposing on a floor of chalk horizontally stratified 
 and having a level surface. These phenomena, in themselves 
 sufficiently difficult of explanation, are rendered still more 
 anomalous by the occasional inclosure in the drift of huge 
 fragments of chalk many yards in diameter. One striking 
 instance occurs west of Sherringham, where an enormous 
 pinnacle of chalk, between seventy and eighty feet in height, 
 is flanked on both sides by vertical layers of loam, clay, and 
 gravel (fig. 32). 
 
 Fig. 32 
 
 Included pinnacle of chalk at Old Hythe point, west of Sherringham. 
 
 d Chalk with regular layers of chalk flints. 
 
 c Layer called ' the pan,' of chalk, flints, and marine shells of recent 
 species, cemented by oxide of iron. 
 
 
 
 This chalky fragment is only one of many detached masses 
 which have been included in the drift, and forced along with 
 
222 CONTORTED DRIFT. CHAP. xn. 
 
 it into their present position. The level surface of the chalk 
 in situ (d) may be traced for miles along the coast, where it 
 has escaped the violent movements to which the incumbent 
 drift has been exposed.* 
 
 We are called upon, then, to explain how any force can 
 have been exerted against the upper masses, so as to produce 
 movements in which the subjacent strata have not partici 
 pated. It may be answered that, if we conceive the till and 
 its boulders to have been drifted to their present place by 
 ice, the lateral pressure may have been supplied by the strand 
 ing of ice-islands. We learn, from the observations of 
 Messrs. Dease and Simpson in the polar regions, that such 
 islands, when they run aground, push before them large 
 mounds of shingle and sand. It is therefore probable that 
 they often cause great alterations in the arrangement of pliant 
 and incoherent strata forming the upper part of shoals or 
 submerged banks, the inferior portions of the same remaining 
 unmoved. Or many of the complicated curvatures of these 
 layers of loose sand and gravel may have been due to another 
 cause, the melting on the spot of icebergs and coast ice in 
 which successive deposits of pebbles, sand, ice, snow, and mud, 
 together with huge masses of rock fallen from cliffs, may have 
 become interstratified. Ice-islands so constituted often cap 
 size when afloat, and gravel once horizontal may have assumed, 
 before the associated ice was melted, an inclined or vertical 
 position. The packing of ice forced up on a coast may lead 
 to a similar derangement in a frozen conglomerate of sand or 
 shingle, and, as Mr. Trimmer has suggested, f alternate layers 
 of earthy matter may have sunk down slowly during the 
 liquefaction of the intercalated ice so as to assume the most 
 fantastic and anomalous positions, while the strata below, 
 
 * For a full account of the drift of 104, May, 1840. 
 
 East Norfolk, see a paper by the f Quarterly Journal, Geological 
 
 author, Philosophical Magazine, No. Society, vol. vii. pp. 22, 30. 
 
CHAP. xii. MUNDESLEY FRESHWATER FORMATION. 223 
 
 and those afterwards thrown down above, may be perfectly 
 horizontal (see above). 
 
 In most cases where the principal contortions of the layers 
 of gravel and sand have a decided correspondence with deep 
 indentations in the underlying till, the hypothesis of the 
 melting of Jarge lumps and masses of ice once mixed up with 
 the till affords the most natural explanation of the phenomena. 
 The quantity of ice now seen in the cliffs near Behring's 
 Straits, in which the remains of fossil elephants are common, 
 and the huge fragments of solid ice which Meyendorf dis 
 covered in Siberia, after piercing through a considerable 
 thickness of incumbent soil, free from ice, is in favour of 
 such an hypothesis, the partial failure of support necessarily 
 giving rise to foldings in the overlying and previously hori 
 zontal layers, as in the case of creeps in coal mines.* 
 
 In the diagram of the cliffs at p. 213, the bent and con 
 torted beds No. 5, last alluded to, are represented as covered 
 by undisturbed beds of gravel and sand, No. 6. These are 
 usually destitute of organic remains ; but at some points 
 marine shells of recent species are said to have been found in 
 them. They afford evidence at many points of repeated 
 denudation and redeposition, and may be the monuments of 
 a long series of ages. 
 
 Mundesley Post-glacial Freshwater Formation. 
 
 In the range of cliffs above described at Mundesley, about 
 two miles south-east of Cromer, a fine example is seen of a 
 freshwater formation, newer than all those already mentioned, 
 a deposit which has filled up a depression hollowed out of all 
 the older beds 3, 4, and 5, of the section, p. 213. 
 
 When I examined this line of coast in 1839, the section 
 alluded to was not so clearly laid open to view as it has 
 
 * See Manual of Geology, by the author, p. 51. 
 
224 
 
 MUNDESLEY FRESHWATER FORMATION. 
 
 CHAP. XII. 
 
 been of late years, and finding at that period not a few of the 
 fossils in the lignite beds, No. 3', above the forest bed, iden 
 tical in species with those from the post-glacial deposits, B c, 
 I supposed the whole to have been of contemporaneous 
 
 03 1 
 
 Section of the newer freshwater formation in the cliffs at Mimdesley, two 
 miles SE. of Cromer, drawn up by the Eev. S. W. King. 
 
 Height of cliff where lowest, 35 feet above high water. 
 
 Older Series. 
 1 Fundamental chalk, below the beach line. 
 
 3 Forest bed, with elephant, rhinoceros, stag, &c., and with tree roots 
 
 and stumps, also below the beach line. 
 
 3' Finely laminated sands and clays, with thin layer of lignite, and 
 shells of Cyclas, and Valvata, and with Mytilus in some beds. 
 
 4 Glacial boulder till. 
 
 5 Contorted drift. 
 
 6 Gravel overlying contorted drift. 
 
 N.B. No. 2 of the section, fig. 27, at p. 213, is wanting here. 
 Newer Freshwater Beds. 
 
 A Coarse river gravel, in layers inclined against the till and laminated 
 sands. 
 
 B Black peaty deposit, with shells of Anodon, Valvata, Cyclas, Suc- 
 cinea, Limnea, Paludina, &c., seeds of Ceratophyllum demersum, 
 Nuphar lutea, scales and bones of pike, perch, salmon, &c., 
 elytra of Donacia, Copris, Harpalus, and other beetles. 
 
 c Yellow sands. 
 
 D Drift gravel 
 
 origin, and so described them in my paper on the Norfolk 
 cliffs.* 
 
 Mr. Gunn was the first to perceive this mistake, which he 
 explained to me on the spot when I revisited Mundesley in 
 the autumn of 1859, in company with Dr. Hooker and 
 
 * Philosophical Magazine, vol. xvi. May 1840, p. 345. 
 
CHAP. xii. MUNDESLEY FRESHWATER FORMATION. 225 
 
 Mr. King. The last-named geologist has had the kindness 
 to draw up for me the annexed diagram of the various beds 
 which he has recently studied in detail.* 
 
 The formations 3, 4, and 5, already described, p. 213, were 
 evidently once continuous, for they may be followed for. 
 miles NW. and SE. without a break, and always in the same 
 order. A valley or river channel was cut through them, pro 
 bably during the gradual upheaval of the country, and the 
 hollow became afterwards the receptacle of the comparatively 
 modern freshwater beds, A, B, c, and D. They may well re 
 present a silted up river-channel, which remained for a time 
 in the state of a lake or mere, and in which the black peaty 
 mass, B, accumulated by a very slow growth over the gravel 
 of the river-bed A. . In B, we find remains of some of the 
 same plants which were enumerated as common in the 
 ancient lignite in 3', such as the yellow water-lily and pond- 
 wort, together with some fresh water shells which occur in 
 the same fluvio-marine series 3'. 
 
 Fig. 34 
 
 Paludina marginata Michaud. (P. minuta Strickland.) 
 Hydrobia marginata.^ 
 
 The middle figure is of the natural size. 
 
 The only shell which I found not referable to a British spe 
 cies is the minute paludina, fig. 34, already alluded to, p. 1 64. 
 
 * Mr. Prestwich has given a correct one, as in Paludina), and therefore to 
 account of this section in a paper read be referable to the Hydrobia, a sub- 
 to the British Association, Oxford, genus of Eissoa. But this species is 
 1860. See Geologist's Magazine, always associated with freshwater 
 vol. iv. 1861. shells, while the Kissose frequent 
 
 f This shell is said to have a sub- marine and brackish waters. 
 spiral operculum (not a concentric 
 
226 COMPAEISON OF MUNDESLEY CHAP. xii. 
 
 When I showed the scales and teeth of the pike, perch, 
 roach, and salmon, which I obtained from this formation, to 
 Mr. Agassiz, he thought they varied so much from their 
 nearest living representatives that they might rank as distinct 
 species ; but Mr. Yarrell doubted the propriety of so distin 
 guishing them. The insects, like the shells and plants, are 
 identical, so far as they are known, with living British 
 species. No progress has yet been made at Mundesley in dis 
 covering the contemporary mammalia. 
 
 By referring to the description and section of the freshwater 
 deposit at p. 159, the reader will at once perceive the striking 
 analogy of the Mundesley and Hoxne deposits, the latter so 
 productive of flint implements of the Amiens type. Both of 
 them, like the Bedford gravel with flint tools and the bones of 
 extinct mammalia (noticed at p. 164), are postglacial. It 
 will also be seen that a long series of events, accompanied by 
 changes in physical geography, intervened between the ' forest 
 bed,' No. 3, fig. 27, p. 213, when the Elephas meridionalis 
 flourished, and the period of the Mundesley fluviatile beds 
 A, B, c ; just as in France I have shown, p. 199, that the 
 same E. meridionalis belonged to a system of drainage 
 different from and anterior to that with which the flint im 
 plements of the old alluvium of the Somme and the Seine 
 were connected. 
 
 Before the growth of the ancient forest, No. 3, fig. 33, the 
 Mastodon arvernensis, a large proboscidian, characteristic of 
 the Norwich crag, appears to have died out, or to have become 
 scarce, as no remains of it have yet been found in the Norfolk 
 cliffs. There was, no doubt, time for other modifications in 
 the mammalian fauna between the era of the marine beds, 
 No. 2, p. 213 (the shells of which imply permanent sub 
 mergence beneath the sea), and the accumulation of the 
 uppermost of the fluvio-marine, and lignite beds, No. 3', which 
 overlie both Nos. 3 and 2, or the buried forest and the crag. 
 
CHAP. xir. AND HOXNE DEPOSITS. 227 
 
 In the interval we must suppose repeated oscillations of level, 
 during which land covered with trees, an estuary with its 
 freshwater shells, and the sea with its Mya truncata and 
 other mollusca still retaining their erect position, gained by 
 turns the ascendency. These changes were accompanied by 
 some denudation followed by a grand submergence of several 
 hundred feet, probably brought about slowly, and when 
 floating ice aided in transporting erratic blocks from great 
 distances. The glacial till, No. 4, then originated, and the 
 gravel and sands, No. 5, were afterwards superimposed on 
 the boulder clay, first in horizontal beds, which became sub 
 sequently contorted. These were covered in their turn by 
 other layers of gravel and sand, No. 6, pp. 213 and 224, the 
 downward movement still continuing. 
 
 The entire thickness of the beds above the chalk at some 
 points near the coast, and the height at which they now are 
 raised, are such as to show that the subsidence of the country 
 after the growth of the forest bed, exceeded four hundred feet. 
 The re-elevation must have amounted to nearly as many feet, 
 as the site of the ancient forest, originally subaerial, has been 
 brought up again to within a few feet of high-water mark. 
 Lastly, after all these events, and probably during the final 
 process of emergence, the valley was scooped out in which 
 the newer freshwater strata of Mundesley, fig. 33, p. 224, were 
 gradually deposited. 
 
 Throughout the whole of this succession of geographical 
 changes, the flora and invertebrate fauna of Europe appear 
 to have undergone no important revolution in their specific 
 characters. The plants of the forest bed belonged already to 
 what has been called the Germanic flora. The mollusca, the 
 insects, and even some of the mammalia, such as the European 
 beaver and roebuck, were the same as those now coexisting 
 with man. Yet the oldest memorials of our species at present 
 discovered in Great Britain are post-glacial, or posterior in date 
 
 Q 2 
 
228 AGE OF MAN PREGLACIAL. CHAP. xn. 
 
 to the boulder clay, No. 4, pp. 213 and 224. The position of the 
 Hoxne flint implements corresponds with that of the Mundesley 
 beds, from A to D, p. 224, and the most likely stratum in which 
 to find hereafter flint tools is no doubt the gravel A of that 
 section which has all the appearance of an old river-bed. No 
 flint tools have yet been observed there, but had the old 
 alluvium of Amiens or Abbeville occurred in the Norfolk 
 cliffs instead of the Valley of the Somme, and had we de 
 pended on the waves of the sea instead of the labour of many 
 hundred workmen continued for twenty years, for exposing 
 the flint implements to view, we might have remained ignorant 
 to this day of the fossil relics brought to light by M. Boucher 
 de Perthes, and those who have followed up his researches. 
 
 Neither need we despair of one day meeting with the signs 
 of man's existence in the forest bed No. 3, or in the overlying 
 strata 3', on the ground of any uncongeniality in the climate 
 or incongruity in the state of the animate creation with the 
 well-being of our species. For the present we must be con 
 tent to wait and consider that we have made no investigations 
 which entitle us to wonder that the bones or stone weapons 
 of the era of the Elephas meridionalis have failed to come 
 to light. If any such lie hid in those strata, and should here 
 after be revealed to us, they would carry back the antiquity 
 of man to a distance of time probably more than twice as 
 great as that which separates our era from that of the most 
 ancient of the tool-bearing gravels yet discovered in Picardy, 
 or elsewhere. But even then the reader will perceive that 
 the age of man, though preglacial, would be so modern in 
 the great geological calendar, as given at p. 7, that he would 
 scarcely date so far back as the commencement of the post- 
 pliocene period. 
 
CHAP. xin. THE GLACIAL PERIOD. 229 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 CHRONOLOGICAL RELATIONS OF THE GLACIAL PERIOD AND THE 
 
 CHRONOLOGICAL RELATIONS OF THE CLOSE OF THE GLACIAL PERIOD 
 
 AND THE EARLIEST GEOLOGICAL SIGNS OF THE APPEARANCE OF MAN 
 
 EFFECTS OF GLACIERS AND ICEBERGS IN POLISHING AND SCORING 
 ROCKS SCANDINAVIA ONCE ENCRUSTED WITH ICE LIKE GREENLAND 
 OUTWARD MOVEMENT OF CONTINENTAL ICE IN GREENLAND MELD 
 CLIMATE OF GREENLAND IN THE MIOCENE PERIOD ERRATICS OF 
 RECENT PERIOD IN SWEDEN GLACIAL STATE OF SWEDEN IN THE POST- 
 PLIOCENE PERIOD SCOTLAND FORMERLY ENCRUSTED WITH ICE ITS 
 
 SUBSEQUENT SUBMERGENCE AND RE-ELEVATION LATEST CHANGES 
 PRODUCED BY GLACIERS IN SCOTLAND REMAINS OF THE MAMMOTH 
 AND REINDEER IN SCOTCH BOULDER CLAY PARALLEL ROADS OF GLEN 
 
 EOY FORMED IN GLACIER LAKES COMPARATIVELY MODERN DATE OF 
 
 THESE SHELVES. 
 
 THE chronological relations of the human and glacial pe 
 riods were frequently alluded to in the last chapter, and 
 the sections obtained near Bedford (p. 164), and at Hoxne, 
 in Suffolk (p. 168), and a general view of the Norfolk cliffs, 
 have taught us that the earliest signs of man's appearance in 
 the British Isles, hitherto detected, are of post-glacial date, 
 in the sense of being posterior to the grand submergence of 
 England beneath the waters of the glacial sea. But long 
 after that period, when nearly the whole of England North of 
 the Thames and Bristol Channel lay submerged for ages, the 
 bottom of the sea, loaded with mud and stones melted out of 
 floating ice, was upheaved, and glaciers filled for a second 
 time the valleys of many mountainous regions. We may now 
 therefore inquire whether the peopling of Europe by the 
 human race and by the mammoth and other mammalia 
 
230 SUPERFICIAL TRACES OF THE EFFECTS CHAP. XIII. 
 
 now extinct, was brought about during this concluding phase 
 of the glacial epoch. 
 
 Although it may be impossible in the present state of our 
 knowledge to come to a positive conclusion on this head, I 
 know of no inquiry better fitted to clear up our views respec 
 ting the geological state of the northern hemisphere at the 
 time when the fabricators of the flint implements of the 
 Amiens type flourished. I shall therefore now proceed to 
 consider the chronological relations of that ancient people 
 with the final retreat of the glaciers from the mountains of 
 Scandinavia, Scotland, Wales, and Switzerland. 
 
 Superficial Markings and Deposits left by Glaciers and 
 
 Icebergs. 
 
 In order fully to discuss this question, I must begin by re 
 ferring to some of the newest theoretical opinions entertained 
 on the glacial question. When treating of this subject in the 
 'Principles of Geology,' ch. xv., and in the ' Manual (or Ele 
 ments) of Greology,' ch. xi., I have stated that the whole mass 
 of the ice in a glacier is in constant motion, and that the 
 blocks of stone detached from boundary precipices, and the 
 mud and sand swept down by avalanches of snow, or by rain 
 from the surrounding heights, are lodged upon the surface 
 and slowly borne along in lengthened mounds, called in 
 Switzerland moraines. These accumulations of rocky frag 
 ments and detrital matter are left at the termination of the 
 glacier, where it melts in a confused heap called the ' terminal 
 moraine,' which is unstratified, because all the blocks, large 
 and small, as well as the sand and the finest mud, are carried 
 to equal distances and quietly deposited in a confused mass 
 without being subjected to the sorting power of running 
 water, which would convey the finer materials farther than 
 the coarser ones, and would produce, as the strength of the 
 
CHAP. Xiir. PRODUCED BY GLACIERS AND ICEBERGS. 231 
 
 current varied from time to time in the same place, a stratified 
 arrangement. 
 
 In those regions where glaciers reach the sea, and where 
 large masses of ice break off and float away, moraines, such 
 as I have just alluded to, may be transported to indefinite 
 distances, and may be deposited on the bottom of the sea 
 wherever the ice happens to melt. If the liquefaction takes 
 place when the berg has run aground and is stationary, and 
 if there be no current, the heap of angular and rounded stones, 
 mixed with sand and mud, may fall to the bottom in an un- 
 stratified form called 'till ' in Scotland, and which has been 
 shown in the last chapter to abound in the Norfolk cliffs ; 
 but should the action of a current intervene at certain points 
 or at certain seasons, then the materials will be sorted as they 
 fall, and arranged in layers according to their relative weight 
 and size. Hence there will be passages from till to stratified 
 clay, gravel, and sand, and intercalations of one in the other. 
 Many of the blocks of stone with which the surfaces of glaciers 
 are loaded, falling occasionally through fissures in the ice, get 
 fixed and frozen into the bottom of the moving mass, and are 
 pushed along under it. In this position, being subjected to 
 great pressure, they scoop out long rectilinear furrows or 
 grooves parallel to each other on the subjacent solid rock. 
 Smaller scratches and striaB are made on the polished surface 
 by crystals or projecting edges of the hardest minerals, just 
 as a diamond cuts glass. 
 
 In all countries the fundamental rock on which the boulder 
 formation reposes, if it consists of granite, gneiss, marble, or 
 other hard stone capable of permanently retaining any super 
 ficial markings which may have been imprinted upon it, is 
 smoothed or polished, and exhibits parallel stria3 and furrows 
 having a determinate direction. This prevailing direction, 
 both in Europe and North America, is evidently connected 
 with the course taken by the erratic blocks in the same dis- 
 
232 SCANDINAVIA ONCE ENCRUSTED CHAP. xiu. 
 
 trict, and is very commonly from north to south, or if it be 
 twenty or thirty or more degrees to the east or west of north, 
 still always corresponds to the direction in which the large 
 angular and rounded stones have travelled. These stones 
 themselves also are often furrowed and scratched on more 
 than one side, like those already spoken of as occurring in 
 the glacial drift of Bedford (p. 165), and in that of Norfolk 
 (pp. 213 and 218). 
 
 When we contemplate the area which is now exposed to 
 the abrading action of ice, or which is the receptacle of mo 
 raine matter thrown down from melting glaciers or bergs, we 
 at once perceive that the submarine area is the most exten 
 sive of the two. The number of large icebergs which float 
 annually to great distances in the northern and southern 
 hemisphere is extremely great, and the quantity of stone 
 and mud which they carry about with them enormous. Some 
 floating islands of ice have been met with from two to five 
 miles in length, and from one hundred to two hundred and 
 twenty-five feet in height above water, the submerged por 
 tion, according to the weight of ice relatively to sea water, 
 being from six to eight times more considerable than the part 
 which is visible. Such masses, when they run aground on 
 the bottom of the sea, must exert a prodigious mechanical 
 power, and may polish and groove the subjacent rocks after 
 the manner of glaciers on the land. Hence there will often 
 be no small difficulty in distinguishing between the effects of 
 the submarine and supramarine agency of ice. 
 
 Scandinavia once covered with Ice, and a Centre of 
 Dispersion of Erratics. 
 
 In the north of Europe, along the borders of the Baltic, 
 where the boulder formation is continuous for hundreds of 
 miles east and west, it has been long known that the erratic 
 
CHAP. xm. WITH ICE LIKE GREENLAND. 233 
 
 blocks, often of very large size, are of northern origin. Some 
 of them have come from Norway and Sweden, others from 
 Finland, and their present distribution implies that they were 
 carried southwards, for a part at least of their way, by floating 
 ice, at a time when much of the area over which they are 
 scattered was under water. But it appears from the obser 
 vations of Boetlingk, in 1840, and those of more recent in 
 quirers, that while many blocks have travelled to the south, 
 others have been carried northwards, or to the shores of the 
 Polar Sea, and others north-eastward, or to those of the White 
 Sea. In fact, they have wandered towards all points of the 
 compass, from the mountains of Scandinavia as a centre, and 
 the rectilinear furrows imprinted by them on the polished 
 surfaces of the mountains where the rocks are hard enough to 
 retain such markings, radiate in all directions, or point out 
 wards from the highest land, in a manner corresponding to 
 the course of the erratics above mentioned. 
 
 Before the glacial theory was adopted, the Swedish and 
 Norwegian geologists speculated on a great flood, or the 
 sudden rush of an enormous body of water charged with mud 
 and stones, descending from the central heights or watershed 
 into the adjoining lower lands. The erratic blocks were sup 
 posed in their downward passage to have smoothed and 
 striated the rock surfaces over which they were forced along. 
 
 It would be a waste of time, in the present state of science, 
 to controvert this hypothesis, as it is now admitted that even 
 if the rush of a diluvial current, invented for the occasion 
 and wholly without analogy in the known course of nature, 
 be granted, it would be inadequate to explain the uniformity, 
 parallelism, persistency, and rectilinearity of the so-called 
 glacial furrows. It is moreover ascertained that heavy 
 masses of rock, not fixed in ice, and moving as freely as they 
 do when simply swept along by a muddy current, do not 
 give rise to such scratches and furrows. 
 
234 VIEWS OF M. KJERULE. CHAP. xm. 
 
 M. Kjerulf, of Christiania, in a paper lately communicated 
 to the Geological Society of Berlin,* has objected, and perhaps 
 with reason, to what he considers the undue extent to which 
 I have, in some of my writings, supposed the mountains of 
 northern Europe to have been submerged during the glacial 
 period. He remarks that the signs of glacial action on the 
 Scandinavian mountains ascend as high as 6,000 feet, whereas 
 fossil marine shells of the same period never reach elevations 
 exceeding 600 feet. The land he says may have been much 
 higher than it now is, but it has evidently not been much 
 lower since the commencement of the glacial period, or marine 
 shells would be traceable to more elevated points. In regard 
 to the absence of marine shells, I shall point out in the se 
 quel how small is the dependence we can place on this kind 
 of negative evidence, if we desire to test by it the extent to 
 which the land has been submerged. I cannot therefore con 
 sent to limit the probable depression and re-elevation of 
 Scandinavia to 600 feet. But that the larger part of the 
 glaciation of that country has been supramarine, I am willing 
 to concede. In support of this view M. Kjerulf observes that 
 the direction of the furrows and striae, produced by glacial 
 abrasion, neither conforms to a general movement of floating 
 ice from the Polar regions, nor to the shape of the existing 
 valleys, as it would do if it had been caused by independent 
 glaciers generated in the higher valleys after the land had 
 acquired its actual shape. Their general arrangement and 
 apparent irregularities are, he contends, much more in accor 
 dance with the hypothesis of there having been at one time 
 a universal covering of ice over the whole of Norway and 
 Sweden, like that now existing in Greenland, which, being 
 annually recruited by fresh falls of snow, was continually 
 pressing outwards and downwards to the coast and lower 
 regions, after crossing many of the lower ridges, and having 
 
 * Zeitschrift der G-eologischen G-esellschaft, Berlin, 1860. 
 
CHAP. xni. CONTINENTAL ICE OF GREENLAND. 235 
 
 no relation to the minor depressions, which were all choked up 
 with ice and reduced to one uniform level. 
 
 Continental Ice of Greenland. 
 
 In support of this view, he appeals to the admirable de 
 scription of the continental ice of Greenland, lately published 
 by Dr. H. Eink, of Copenhagen,* who resided three or four 
 years in the Danish settlements, in Baffin's Bay, on the west 
 coast of Greenland, between latitudes 69 and 73 N. ' In that 
 country, the land,' says Dr. Eink, ' may be divided into two 
 regions, the " inland " and the " outskirts." The " inland," 
 which is 800 miles from west to east, and of much greater 
 length from north to south, is a vast unknown continent, 
 buried under one continuous and colossal mass of permanent 
 ice, which is always moving seaward, but a small proportion 
 only of it in an easterly direction, since nearly the whole de 
 scends towards Baffin's Bay.' On reaching the heads of the 
 fiords which intersect the coast, a perpendicular wall of ice, 
 2,000 feet thick, is seen, beyond which the ice of the interior 
 rises by a succession of steps, twenty-five of which were 
 counted by Eink (but of which there are known to be still 
 more), all of them leading up to as many icy platforms, the 
 ridges and valleys being levelled up to one uniform plane, 
 and concealed by these tabular masses of ice. 
 
 Although all the ice is moving seaward, the greatest quan 
 tity is discharged at the heads of certain large friths, usually 
 about four miles wide, which, if the climate were milder, 
 would be the outlet of as many great rivers. Through these 
 the ice is now protruded in huge blocks, several miles wide, 
 and from 1,000 to 1,500 feet in height or thickness. When 
 these masses reach the friths, they do not melt or break up 
 into fragments, but continue their course in a solid form 
 
 * Journal of Royal Geographical Society, vol. xxiii. p. 145, 1853. 
 
236 HINK ON ICE OF GREENLAND. CHAP, xiir, 
 
 under the salt water, grating along the rocky bottom, which 
 they must polish and score at depths of hundreds and even of 
 more than a thousand feet. At length, when there is water 
 enough to float them, huge portions, having broken off, fill 
 Baffin's Bay with icebergs of a size exceeding any which could 
 be produced by ordinary land glaciers. Stones, sand, and 
 mud are sometimes included in these bergs which float down 
 Baffin's Bay. At some points, where the ice of the interior of 
 Greenland reaches the coast, Dr. Eink saw mighty springs 
 of clayey water issuing from under the edge of the ice even 
 in winter, showing the grinding action of the glacial mass 
 mixed with sand, on the subjacent surface of the rocks. 
 
 The ' outskirts,' where the Danish colonies are stationed, 
 consist of numerous islands, of which Disco island is the* 
 largest, in lat. 70 N., and of many peninsulas, with fiords 
 from fifty to a hundred miles long, running into the land, 
 and through which the ice above alluded to passes on its 
 way to the bay. This area is 30,000 square miles in extent, 
 and contains in it some mountains 4,000 feet to 5,000 feet 
 high. The perpetual snow usually begins at the height of 
 2,000 feet, below which level the land is for the most part 
 free from snow between June and August, and supports a 
 vegetation of several hundred species of flowering plants, 
 which ripen their seeds before the winter. There are even 
 some places where phenogamous plants have been found at an 
 elevation of 4,500 feet ; a fact which, when we reflect on the 
 immediate vicinity of so large and lofty a region of conti 
 nental ice in the same latitude, well deserves the attention of 
 the geologist, who should also bear in mind, that while the 
 Danes are settled to the west in the 'outskirts,* there exists, 
 due east of the most southern portion of this ice-covered con 
 tinent, at the distance of about 1,200 miles, the home of the 
 Laplanders with their reindeer, bears, wolves, seals, walruses, 
 and cetacea. If, therefore, there are geological grounds for 
 
CHAP. XIII. FORMER MILD CLIMATE OF GREENLAND. 237 
 
 suspecting that Scandinavia or Scotland or Wales were ever 
 in the same glacial condition as Greenland now is, we must 
 not imagine that the contemporaneous fauna and flora were 
 everywhere poor and stunted, or that they may not, especially 
 at the distance of a few hundred miles in a southward di 
 rection, have been very luxuriant. 
 
 Another series of observations made by Captain Graah, 
 during a survey of Greenland between 1823 and 1829, and 
 by Dr. Pingel in 1830-32, adds not a little to the geological 
 interest of the ( outskirts,' in their bearing on glacial pheno 
 mena of ancient date. Those Danish investigators, with one 
 of whom, Dr. Pingel, I conversed at Copenhagen in 1834, 
 ascertained that the whole coast from lat. 60 to about 70 north 
 has been subsiding for the last four centuries, so that some 
 ancient piles driven into the beach to support the boats of the 
 settlers have been gradually submerged, and wooden build 
 ings have had to be repeatedly shifted farther inland.* 
 
 In Norway and Sweden, instead of such a subsiding move 
 ment, the land is slowly rising ; but we have only to suppose 
 that formerly, when it was covered like Greenland with conti 
 nental ice, it sank at the rate of several feet in a century, 
 and we shall be able to explain why marine deposits are 
 found above the level of the sea, and why these generally 
 overlie polished and striated surfaces of rock. 
 
 We know that Greenland was not always covered with 
 snow and ice, for when we examine the tertiary strata of 
 Disco Island (of the upper miocene period) we discover there 
 a multitude of fossil plants, which demonstrate that, like 
 many other parts of the arctic regions, it formerly enjoyed a 
 mild and genial climate. Among the fossils brought from 
 that island, lat. 70 K, Professor Heer has recognised 
 Sequoia Langsdorfii, a coniferous species which flourished 
 throughout a great part of Europe in the miocene period, 
 
 * Principles of Geology, cli. xxx. 
 
238 MIOCENE FLORA OF ICELAND. CHAP. xra. 
 
 and is very closely allied to the living Sequoia sempervirens 
 of California. The same plant has been found fossil by Sir 
 John Eichardson within the arctic circle, far to the west on 
 the Mackenzie Eiver, near the entrance of Bear Eiver, also by 
 some Danish naturalists in Iceland to the east. The Ice 
 landic surturbrand, or lignite, of this age has also yielded a 
 rich harvest of plants, more than thirty-one of them, accord 
 ing to Steenstrup and Heer, in a good state of preservation, 
 and no less than fifteen specifically identical with miocene 
 plants of Europe. Thirteen of the number are arborescent; 
 and amongst others is a tulip-tree (Liriodendron), with its fruit 
 and characteristic leaves, a plane (Platanus), a walnut, and a 
 vine, affording unmistakeable evidence of a climate in the 
 parallel of the arctic circle which precludes the supposition 
 of glaciers then existing in the neighbourhood, still less any 
 general crust of continental ice, like that of Greenland.* 
 
 As the older pliocene flora of the tertiary strata of Italy, 
 like the shells of the coralline crag, before adverted to, 
 p. 210, indicate a temperature milder than that now prevail 
 ing in Europe, though not so warm as that of the upper 
 miocene period, it is probable that the accumulation of snow 
 and glaciers on the mountains and valleys of Greenland did 
 not begin till after the commencement of the pliocene period, 
 and may not have reached its maximum until the close of 
 that period. 
 
 Norway and Sweden appear to have passed through all the 
 successive phases of glaciation which Greenland has experi 
 enced, and others which that country will one day undergo, if 
 the climate which it formerly enjoyed should ever be restored 
 to it. There must have been first a period of separate glaciers 
 in Scandinavia, then a Greenlandic state of continental ice, and 
 thirdly, when that diminished, a second period of enormous 
 separate glaciers filling many a valley now wooded with fir and 
 
 * Heer, Eeclierclies sur la Vegetation du Pays tertiaire, &c., 1861, p. 178. 
 
CHAP. xm. ERRATICS OF RECENT PERIOD IN SWEDEN. 239 
 
 birch. Lastly, under the influence of the Grulf Stream, and 
 various changes in the height and extent of land in the arctic 
 circle, a melting of nearly all the permanent ice between lati 
 tudes 60 and 70 north, corresponding to the parallels of the 
 continental ice of Greenland, has occurred, so that we have now 
 to go farther north than lat. 70 before we encounter any 
 glacier coming down to the sea coast. Among other signs of 
 the last retreat of the extinct glaciers, Kjerulf and other 
 authors describe large transverse moraines left in many of the 
 Norwegian and Swedish glens. 
 
 Chronological Relations of the Human and Glacial 
 Periods in Sweden. 
 
 We may now consider whether any, and what part, of these 
 changes in Scandinavia may have been witnessed by man. 
 In Sweden, in the immediate neighbourhood of Upsala, I 
 observed, in 1834, a ridge of stratified sand and gravel, in 
 the midst of which occurs a layer of marl, evidently formed 
 originally at the bottom of the Baltic, by the slow growth of 
 the mussel, cockle, and other marine shells of living species 
 intermixed with some proper to fresh water. The marine 
 shells are all of dwarfish size, like those now inhabiting the 
 brackish waters of the Baltic ; and the marl, in which myriads 
 of them are imbedded, is now raised more than a hundred 
 feet above the level of the Grulf of Bothnia. Upon the top 
 of this ridge (one of those called osars in Sweden) repose 
 several huge erratics, consisting of gneiss for the most part 
 unrounded, from nine to sixteen feet in diameter, and which 
 must have been brought into their present position since the 
 time when the neighbouring gulf was already characterised 
 by its peculiar fauna. Here, therefore, we have proof that 
 the transport of erratics continued to take place, not merely 
 when the sea was inhabited by the existing testacea, but 
 
240 UPSALA ERRATICS. CHAP. xm. 
 
 when the north of Europe had already assumed that remark 
 able feature of its physical geography, which separates the 
 Baltic from the North Sea, and causes the Grulf of Bothnia 
 to have only one-fourth of the saltness belonging to the 
 ocean. 
 
 I cannot doubt that these large erratics of Upsala were 
 brought into their present position during the recent period, 
 not only because of their moderate elevation above the sea- 
 level in a country where the land is now rising every century, 
 but because I observed signs of a great oscillation of level 
 which had taken place at Sodertelje, south of Stockholm 
 (about forty-five miles distant from Upsala), after the country 
 had been inhabited by man. I described, in the 'Philosophical 
 Transactions ' for 1835, the section there laid open in digging 
 a level in 1819, which showed that a subsidence followed by a 
 re-elevation of land, each movement amounting to more than 
 sixty feet, had occurred since the time when a rude hut had 
 been built on the ancient shore. The wooden frame of the 
 hut, with a ring of hearthstones on the floor, and much charcoal, 
 were found, and over them marine strata, more than sixty 
 feet thick, containing the dwarf variety of Mytilus edulis, and 
 other brackish -water shells of the Bothnian Gulf. Some vessels 
 put together with wooden pegs, of anterior date to the use of 
 metals, were also embedded in parts of the same marine for 
 mation, which has since been raised, so that the upper beds 
 are more than sixty feet above the sea-level, the hut being thus 
 restored to about its original position relatively to the sea. 
 
 We have seen in the account of the Danish ' shell-mounds,' 
 or 4 refuse-heaps,' of the recent period (p. 13), that even at 
 the comparatively late period of their origin the waters of 
 the Baltic had been rendered more salt than they are now. 
 The Upsala erratics may belong to nearly the same era as those 
 * refuse-heaps.' But were we to go back to a long antecedent 
 epoch, or to that of the Belgian and British caves with their 
 
CHAP. XIIT. GLACIAL PERIOD IN SCOTLAND. 241 
 
 extinct animals, and the signs they afford of a state of phy 
 sical geography departing widely from the present, or to 
 the era of the implement-bearing alluvium of St. Acheul, we 
 might expect to find Scandinavia overwhelmed with glaciers, 
 and the country uninhabitable by man. At a much remoter 
 period the same country was in the state in which Greenland 
 now is, overspread with one uninterrupted coating of conti 
 nental ice, which has left its peculiar markings on the highest 
 mountains. This period, probably anterior to the earliest 
 traces yet brought to light of the human race, may have 
 coincided with the submergence of England, and the accumu 
 lation of the boulder-clay of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Bedford 
 shire, before mentioned. It has already been stated that the 
 syenite and some other rocks of the Norfolk till (p. 218) 
 seem to have come from Scandinavia, and there is no era 
 when icebergs are so likely to have floated them so far south 
 as when the whole of Sweden and Norway were enveloped 
 in a massive crust of ice ; a state of things the existence of 
 which is deduced from the direction of the glacial furrows, 
 and their frequent unconformity to the shape of the minor 
 valleys. 
 
 Glacial Period in Scotland. 
 
 Mr. Eobert Chambers, after visiting Norway and Sweden, 
 and comparing the signs of glacial action observed there 
 with similar appearances in the Grampians, came to the con 
 clusion that the Highlands both of Scandinavia and Scotland 
 had once been ; moulded in ice,' and that the outward and 
 downward movement and pressure of the frozen mass had 
 not only smoothed, polished, and scratched the rocks, but 
 had, in the course of ages, deepened and widened the valleys, 
 and produced much of that denudation which has commonly 
 been ascribed exclusively to aqueous action. The glaciation 
 
 R 
 
242 GLACIAL PEEIOD IN SCOTLAND. CHAP. xm. 
 
 of the Scotch mountains was traced by him to the height of 
 at least three thousand feet.* 
 
 Professor Agassiz, after his tour in Scotland in 1840, 
 announced the opinion that erratic blocks had been dispersed 
 from the Scottish mountains as from an independent centre, 
 and that the capping of ice had been of extraordinary 
 thickness. Mr. T. F. Jamieson, of Ellon, in Aberdeenshire, 
 has recently brought forward an additional body of facts in 
 support of this theory. According to him the Grampians 
 were at the period of extreme cold enveloped 'in one great 
 winding sheet of snow and ice,' which reached everywhere 
 to the coast-line, the land being then more elevated than it 
 is now. He describes the glacial furrows sculptured on the 
 solid rocks as pointing in Aberdeenshire to the south-east, 
 those of the valley of the Forth at Edinburgh, from west to 
 east, and higher up the same valley at Stirling, from north 
 west to south-east, as they should do if the ice had followed 
 the lines of what is now the principal drainage. The obser 
 vations of Sir James Hall, Mr. Maclaren, Mr. Chambers, and 
 Dr. Fleming, are cited by him in confirmation of this ar 
 rangement of the glacial markings, while in Sutherland and 
 Kossshire he shows that the glacial furrows along the north 
 coast point northwards, and in Argyleshire westwards, always 
 in accordance with the direction of the principal glens and 
 fiords. 
 
 Another argument is also adduced by him in proof of the 
 ice having exerted its mechanical force in a direction from 
 the higher and more inland country to the lower region and 
 sea coast. Isolated hills and minor prominences of rock are 
 often polished and striated on the land side, while they remain 
 rough and jagged on the side fronting the sea. This may be 
 seen both on the east and west coast, Mention is also made 
 
 * Ancient Sea Margins, Edinburgh, New Philosophical Journal, April 
 1848. Glacial Phenomena, Edinburgh 1853, and January 1855. 
 
CHAP. xm. SUBMERGENCE OF SCOTLAND. 243 
 
 of blocks of granite which have travelled from south to north 
 in Aberdeenshire, of which there would have been no ex 
 amples had the erratics been all brought by floating ice from 
 the arctic regions when Scotland was submerged. It is also 
 urged against the doctrine of attributing the general glacia- 
 tion to submergence, that the glacial grooves, instead of ra 
 diating as they do from a centre, would, if they had been due 
 to ice coming from the north, have been parallel to the 
 coast-line, to which they are now often almost at right 
 angles. The argument, moreover, which formerly had most 
 weight in favour of floating ice, namely, that it explained why 
 so many of the stones did not conform to the contour and 
 direction of the minor hills and valleys, is now brought 
 forward, and with no small effect, in favour of the doctrine 
 of continental ice on the Greenlandic scale, which, after 
 levelling up the lesser inequalities, would occasionally flow in 
 mighty ice-currents, in directions often at a high angle to 
 the smaller ridges and glens. 
 
 The application to Scandinavia and Scotland of this theory 
 makes it necessary to reconsider the validity of the proofs 
 formerly relied on as establishing the submergence of a great 
 part of Scotland beneath the sea, at some period subsequent 
 to the commencement of the glacial period. In all cases 
 where marine shells overlie till, or rest on polished and 
 striated surfaces of rock, the evidence of the land having been 
 under water, and having been since upheaved, remains un 
 shaken ; but this proof alone rarely extends to heights ex 
 ceeding five hundred feet. In the basin of the Clyde we have 
 already seen that recent strata occur twenty-five feet above 
 the sea-level, with existing species of marine testacea, and with 
 buried canoes, and other works of art. At the higher level 
 of forty feet occurs the well-known raised beach of the western 
 coast, which, according to Mr. Jamieson, contains, near 
 Fort William and on Loch Fyne and elsewhere, an assem- 
 
 E 2 
 
244 SUBAQUEOUS DRIFT IN PERTHSHIRE. CHAP. XIII. 
 
 blage of shells implying a colder climate than that of the 
 twenty-five foot terrace, or that of the present sea ; just as, in 
 the Valley' of the Soinme, the higher level gravels are sup 
 posed to belong to a colder period than the lower ones, and 
 still more decidedly than that of the present era (see p. 142). 
 At still greater elevations, older beds containing a still more 
 arctic group of shells have been observed at Airdrie, fourteen 
 miles south-east of Glasgow, 524 feet above the level of the 
 sea. They were embedded in stratified clays, with the un- 
 stratified boulder till both above and below them, and in the 
 overlying unstratified drift were some boulders of granite 
 which must have come from distances of sixty miles at the 
 least.* The presence of Tellina calcarea, and several other 
 northern shells, implies a climate colder than that of the present 
 Scottish seas. In the north of Scotland, marine shells have 
 been found in deposits of the same age in Caithness and in 
 Aberdeenshire at heights of two hundred and fifty feet, and 
 on the shores of the Moray Frith, as at Gramrie in Banff, at 
 an elevation of three hundred and fifty feet ; and the stratified 
 sands and beds of pebbles which belong to the same formation 
 ascend still higher to heights of five hundred feet at least. f 
 At much greater heights, stratified masses of drift occur in 
 which hitherto no organic remains, whether of marine or 
 freshwater animals., have ever been found. It is still an un 
 decided question whether the origin of all such deposits in 
 the G-rampians can be explained without the intervention of 
 the sea. One of the most conspicuous examples has been 
 described by Mr. Jamieson as resting on the flank of a hill 
 called Meal Uaine, in Perthshire, on the east side of the valley 
 of the Tummel, just below Killiecrankie. It consists of per- 
 
 * Smith of Jordanhill, Quarterly ceedings of the Geological Society, 
 
 Geological Journal, vol. vi. p. 387, vol. ii. p. 545 ; and T. F. Jamieson, 
 
 1850. Geological Quarterly Journal, vol. 
 
 f See papers by Prestwich, Pro- xvi. 
 
CH.4P. XIII. SUBAQUEOUS DRIFT IN PERTHSHIRE. 2-15 
 
 fectly horizontal strata, the lowest portion of them 300 feet 
 above the river and 600 feet above the sea. From this 
 elevation to an altitude of nearly 1,200 feet the same series 
 of strata is traceable, continuously, up the slope of the moun 
 tain, and some patches are seen here and there even as high as 
 1,550 feet above the sea. They are made up in great part of 
 finely laminated silt, alternating with coarser materials, through 
 which stones from four to five feet in length are scattered. 
 These large boulders, and some smaller ones, are polished on 
 one or more sides, and marked with glacial striae. The sub 
 jacent rocks, also, of gneiss, mica slate, and quartz, are every 
 where grooved and polished as if by the passage of a glacier.* 
 
 At one spot a vertical thickness of 130 feet of this series 
 of strata is exposed to view by a mountain torrent, and in all 
 more than 2,000 layers of clay, sand, and gravel were counted, 
 the whole evidently accumulated under water. Some beds 
 consist of an impalpable mud-like putty, apparently derived 
 from the grinding down of felspar, and resembling the mud 
 produced by the grinding action of modern glaciers. 
 
 Mr. Jamieson, when he first gave an account of this drift, 
 inferred, in spite of the absence of marine shells, that it 
 implied the submergence of Scotland beneath the ocean after 
 the commencement of the glacial period, or after the era of 
 continental ice indicated by the subjacent floor of polished 
 and grooved rock. This conclusion would require a submer 
 gence of the land as far up as 1,550 feet above the present 
 sea-level, after which a great re-upheaval must have occurred. 
 But the same author, having lately revisited the valley of the 
 Tummel, suggests another possible, and I think probable, 
 explanation of the same phenomena. The stratified drift in 
 question is situated in a deep depression between two but 
 tresses of rock, and if an enormous glacier be supposed to 
 
 * Jamieson, Geological Quarterly Journal, vol. xvi. p. 360. 
 
246 RE-ELEVATION OF SCOTLAND. CHAP. xin. 
 
 have once filled the valley of the Tummel to the height of the 
 stratified drift, it may have dammed up the mouth of a 
 mountain torrent by a transverse barrier, giving rise to a 
 deep pond, in which beds of clay and sand brought down by 
 the waters of the torrent were deposited. Charpentier in his 
 work on the Swiss glaciers has described many such recep 
 tacles of stratified matter now in progress, and due to such 
 blockages, and he has pointed out the remnants of ancient 
 and similar formations left by extinct glaciers of an earlier 
 epoch. He specially notices that angular stones of various 
 dimensions, often polished and striated, which rest on the 
 glacier and are let fall when the torrent undermines the 
 side of the moving ice, descend into the small lake and be 
 come interstratified with the gravel and fine sediment brought 
 down by the torrent into the same.* 
 
 The evidence of the former sojourn of the sea upon the 
 land after the commencement of the glacial period was for 
 merly inferred from the height to which erratic blocks derived 
 from distant regions could be traced, besides the want of 
 conformity in the glacial furrows to the present contours of 
 many of the valleys. Some of these phenomena may now, 
 as we have seen, be accounted for by assuming that there was 
 once a crust of ice resembling that now covering Greenland. 
 
 The Grampians in Forfarshire and in Perthshire are from 
 3,000 to 4,000 feet high. To the southward lies the broad 
 and deep valley of Strathmore, and to the south of this 
 again rise the Sidlaw Hills to the height of 1,500 feet and 
 upwards. On the highest summits of this chain, formed of 
 sandstone and shale, and at various elevations, I have 
 observed huge angular fragments of mica-schist, some three 
 and others fifteen feet in diameter, which have been conveyed 
 for a distance of at least fifteen miles from the nearest 
 Grampian rocks from which they could have been detached, 
 
 * Charpentier, Essai sur les Glaciers, p. 63, 1841. 
 
CHAP. XIII. RE-ELEVATION OF SCOTLAND. 247 
 
 Others have been left strewed over the bottom of the large 
 intervening vale of Strathmore.* 
 
 It may be argued that the transportation of such blocks 
 may have been due not to floating ice, but to a period when 
 Strathmore was filled up with land ice, a current of which ex 
 tended from the Perthshire Highlands to the summit of the 
 Sidlaw Hills, and the total absence of marine or freshwater 
 shells from all deposits, stratified or unstratified, which have 
 any connection with these erratics in Forfarshire and Perth 
 shire may be thought to favour such a theory. 
 
 But the same mode of transport can scarcely be imagined 
 for those fragments of mica-schist, one of them weighing from 
 eight to ten tons, which were observed much farther south 
 by Mr. Maclaren on the Pentland Hills, near Edinburgh, at 
 the height of 1,100 feet above the sea, the nearest mountain 
 composed of this formation being fifty miles distant.! On 
 the same hills, also, at all elevations, stratified gravels occur 
 which, although devoid of shells, it seems hardly possible to 
 refer to any but a marine origin.f 
 
 Although I am willing, therefore, to concede that the 
 glaciation of the Scotch mountains, at elevations exceeding 
 2,000 feet, may be explained by land ice, it seems difficult 
 not to embrace the conclusion that a subsidence took place 
 not merely of 500 or 600 feet, as demonstrated by the 
 marine shells, but to a much greater amount, as shown by the 
 present position of erratics and some patches of stratified drift. 
 The absence of marine shells at greater heights than 525 feet 
 above the sea, will be treated of in a future chapter. It may 
 in part, perhaps, be ascribed to the action of glaciers, which 
 swept out marine strata from all the higher valleys, after 
 the re-emergence of the land. 
 
 * Proceedings of the Geological f Maclaren, Geology of Fife, &c., 
 Society, vol. iii. p. 344. p. 220. 
 
248 LATEST GLACIAL CHANGES IN SCOTLAND. CHAP. xui. 
 
 Latest Changes produced by Glaciers in Scotland. 
 
 We may next consider the state of Scotland after its 
 emergence from the glacial sea, when we cannot fail to 
 be approaching the time when man coexisted with the 
 mammoth and other mammalia now extinct. In a paper 
 which I published in 1840, on the ancient glaciers of Forfar- 
 shire, I endeavoured to show that some of these existed after 
 the mountains and glens had acquired precisely their present 
 shape,* and had left moraines even in the minor valleys, just 
 where they would now leave them were the snow and ice 
 again to gain ground. I described also one remarkable 
 transverse mound, evidently the terminal moraine of a 
 retreating glacier, which crosses the valley of the South Esk, 
 a few miles above the point where it issues from the 
 Grampians, and about six miles below the town of Clova. It 
 is situated at a place called Grlenairn (perhaps 700 feet 
 above the level of the sea), where the valley is half a mile 
 broad and is bounded by steep and lofty mountains. The 
 valley immediately above this transverse barrier expands 
 into a wide alluvial plain, which has evidently once been a 
 lake. The barrier itself, nearly 200 feet high, consists in its 
 lower part of till with boulders, 80 feet thick, precisely resem 
 bling the moraine of a Swiss glacier, above which there is a 
 mass of stratified sand 100 feet thick, which has the appear 
 ance of consisting of the materials of the moraine re-arranged 
 in a stratified form, possibly by the waters of a glacier lake. 
 The structure of the entire barrier has been laid open by the 
 Esk, which has cut through it a deep passage about 300 yards 
 wide. 
 
 I have also given an account of another striking feature in 
 the physical geography of Perthshire and Forfarshire, which I 
 
 * Proceedings of the Geological Society, vol. iii. p. 337. 
 
CHAP. XIII. FORFARSHIRE ZONE OF BOULDER CLAY. 249 
 
 consider to belong to the same period; namely, a continuous 
 zone of boulder clay, forming ridges and mounds from fifty 
 to seventy feet high (the upper part of the mounds usually 
 stratified), enclosing numerous lakes, some of them 
 several miles long, and many ponds and swamps filled 
 with shell-marl and peat. This band of till, with Grampian 
 boulders and associated river-gravel, may be traced con 
 tinuously for a distance of thirty-four miles, with a width of 
 three and a half miles, from near Dunkeld, by Coupar, to the 
 south of Blairgowrie, then through the lowest part of Strath- 
 more, and afterwards in a straight line through the greatest 
 depression in the Sidlaw Hills, from Forfar to Lunan Bay. 
 
 Although no great river now takes its course through this 
 line df ancient lakes, moraines, and river gravel, yet it evi 
 dently marks an ancient line by which, first, a great glacier 
 descended from the mountains to the sea, and by which, 
 secondly, at a later period, the principal water drainage of this 
 country was effected. The subsequent modification in geo 
 graphy is comparable in amount to that which has taken 
 place since the higher level gravels of the Valley of the 
 Somme were formed, or since the Belgian caves were filled 
 with mud and bone-breccia. 
 
 Mr. Jamieson has remarked, in reference to this and some 
 other extinct river-channels of corresponding date, that we 
 have the means of ascertaining the direction in which the 
 waters flowed by observing the arrangement of the oval and 
 flattish pebbles in their deserted channels ; for in the bed of a 
 fast-flowing river such pebbles are seen to dip towards the 
 current, as represented in fig. 35, such being the position of 
 greatest resistance to the stream.* If this be admitted, it 
 follows that the higher or mountainous country bore the 
 same relation to the lower lands, at the time when a great 
 river passed through this chain of lakes, as it does at present. 
 
 * Jamieson, Quarterly Geological Journal, vol. xvi. p. 349. 
 
250 ORGANIC REMAINS IN SCOTCH BOULDER CLAY. CHAP. xin. 
 
 Fig. 35 
 
 We also seem to have a test of the comparatively modern 
 origin of the mounds of till which surround the above men 
 tioned chain of lakes (of which that of Forfar is one), in 
 the species of organic remains contained in the shell-marl 
 deposited at their bottom. All the mammalia as well as 
 shells are of recent species. Unfortunately, we have no infor 
 mation as to the fauna which inhabited the country at the time 
 when the till itself was formed. There seem to be only three 
 or four instances as yet known in all Scotland of mammalia 
 having been discovered in boulder clay. 
 
 Mr. E. Bald has recorded the circumstances under which 
 a single elephant's tusk was found in the unstratified drift of 
 the Valley of the Forth, with the minuteness which such a 
 discovery from its rarity well deserved. He distinguishes 
 the boulder clay, under the name of ' the old alluvial cover,' 
 from that more modern alluvium, in which the whales of 
 Airthrie, described at p. 53, were found. This cover he 
 says is sometimes one hundred and sixty feet thick. Having 
 never observed any organic remains in it, he watched with 
 curiosity and care the digging of the Union Canal between 
 Edinburgh and Falkirk, which passed for no less than twenty- 
 eight miles almost continuously through it. Mr. Baird the 
 engineer, who superintended the works, assisted in the inquiry, 
 and at one place only in this long section did they meet with 
 a fossil, namely, at Cliftonhall, in the valley of the Almond. 
 It lay at a depth of between fifteen and twenty feet from the 
 surface, in very stiff clay, and consisted of an elephant's 
 tusk, thirty-nine inches long and thirteen in circumference, in 
 so fresh a state that an ivory turner purchased it and turned 
 part of it into chessmen before it was rescued from destruction. 
 
CHAP. XIIT. ORGANIC REMAINS IN SCOTCH BOULDER CLAY. 251 
 
 The remainder is still preserved in the museum at Edinburgh, 
 but by exposure to the air it has shrunk considerably.* In 
 1817, two other tusks and some bones of the elephant, as we 
 learn from the same authority (Mr. Bald), were met with, 
 three and a half feet long and thirteen inches in circumference, 
 lying in an horizontal position, seventeen feet deep in clay, 
 with marine shells, at Kilmaurs, in Ayrshire. The species of 
 shells are not given. f 
 
 In another excavation through the Scotch boulder clay, made 
 in digging the Clyde and Forth Junction Railway, the antlers 
 of a reindeer were found at Croftamie, in Dumbartonshire, 
 in the basin of the river Endrick, which flows into Loch 
 Lomond. They had cut through twelve feet of till with 
 angular and rounded stones, some of large size, and then 
 through six feet of underlying clay, when they came upon 
 the deer's horns, eighteen feet from the surface, and within 
 a foot of the sandstone on which the till rested. At the 
 distance of a few yards, and in the same position, but a foot 
 or two deeper, were observed marine shells, Cyprina is- 
 landica, Astarte elliptica, A. compressa, Fusus antiquus, 
 Littorina littorea, and a Balanus. The height above the 
 level of the sea was between one hundred and one hundred 
 and three feet. The reindeer's horn was seen by Professor 
 Owen, who considered it to be that of a young female of the 
 large variety, called by the Hudson's Bay trappers the 
 carabou. 
 
 The remains of elephants, now in the museums of Glasgow 
 and Edinburgh, purporting to come from the superficial 
 deposits of Scotland have been referred to Mephas pri- 
 migenius. In cases where tusks alone have been found 
 unaccompanied by molar teeth, such specific determinations 
 may be uncertain ; but if any one specimen be correctly 
 
 * Memoirs of the Wernerian Society, Edinburgh, vol. iv. p. 58. 
 f Ibid., vol. iv. p. 63. 
 
252 PARALLEL ROADS OF GLEN ROY. CHAP. xm. 
 
 named, the occurrence of the mammoth and reindeer in the 
 Scotch boulder-clay, as both these quadrupeds are known to 
 have been contemporary with man, favours the idea which I 
 have already expressed, that the close of the glacial period in 
 the Grampians may have coincided in time with the existence 
 of man in those parts of Europe where the climate was less 
 severe, as, for example, in the basins of the Thames, Somme, 
 and Seine, in which the bones of many extinct mammalia 
 are associated with flint implements of the antique type. 
 
 Parallel Roads of Glen Roy in Scotland. 
 
 Perhaps no portion of the superficial drift of Scotland can 
 lay claim to so modern an origin on the score of the fresh 
 ness of its aspect, as that which forms what are called the 
 Parallel Roads of Grlen Roy. If they do not belong to the 
 recent epoch, they are at least posterior in date to the pre 
 sent outline of mountain and glen, and to the time when 
 every one of the smaller burns ran in their present channels, 
 though some of them have since been slightly deepened. 
 The perfect horizontally, moreover, of the roads, one of which 
 is continuous for about twenty miles from east to west, and 
 twelve miles from north to south, shows that since the era 
 of their formation no change has taken place in the relative 
 levels of different parts of the district. 
 
 Grlen Roy is situated in the Western Highlands, about ten 
 miles north of Fort William, near the western end of the great 
 glen of Scotland, or Caledonian Canal, and near the foot of 
 the highest of the Grampians, Ben Nevis. (See map, p. 254.) 
 Throughout nearly its whole length, a distance of more than 
 ten miles, three parallel roads or shelves are traced along the 
 steep sides of the mountains, as represented in the annexed 
 view, Plate II., by the late Sir T. Lander Dick, each maintain 
 ing a perfect horizontally, and continuing at exactly the 
 
V, 
 
 I ! 
 
 fc 
 
 ilt 
 
 o ?, 
 
CHAP. XIII. PARALLEL EOADS OF GLEN ROT. 253 
 
 same level on the opposite sides of the glen. Seen at a 
 distance, they appear like ledges, or roads, cut artificially out 
 of the sides of the hills ; but when we are upon them, we can 
 scarcely recognise their existence, so uneven is their surface, 
 and so covered with boulders. They are from ten to sixty 
 feet broad, and merely differ from the side of the mountain 
 by being somewhat less steep. 
 
 On closer inspection, we find that these terraces are stra 
 tified in the ordinary manner of alluvial or littoral deposits, 
 as may be seen at those points where ravines have been 
 excavated by torrents. The parallel shelves, therefore, have 
 not been caused by denudation, but by the deposition of 
 detritus, precisely similar to that which is dispersed in 
 smaller quantities over the declivities of the hills above. 
 These hills consist of clay-slate, mica schist, and granite, 
 which rocks have been worn away and laid bare at a few 
 points immediately above the parallel roads. The lowest 
 of these roads is about 850 feet above the level of the 
 sea, the next about 212 feet higher, and the third 82 feet 
 above the second. There is a fourth shelf, which occurs 
 only in a contiguous valley called Grlen Grluoy, which is 
 twelve feet above the highest of all the Glen Eoy roads, and 
 consequently about 1,156 feet above the level of the sea.* One 
 only, the lowest of the three roads of Grlen Eoy, is continued 
 throughout Grlen Spean, a large valley with which Grlen Eoy 
 unites. (See Plate II. and map, fig. 36.) As the shelves, having 
 no slope towards the sea like ordinary river terraces, are always 
 at the same absolute height, they become continually more 
 elevated above the river in proportion as we descend each 
 valley ; and they at length terminate very abruptly, without 
 any obvious cause, or any change either in the shape of the 
 ground or in the composition or hardness of the rocks. 
 
 * Another detached shelf also occurs at Kilfinnan. (See Map, p. 254.) 
 
254 
 
 MAP OF PARALLEL ROADS OF GLEN ROY. CHAP. xm. 
 
CHAP xin. PARALLEL ROADS OF GLEN ROY. 255 
 
 I should exceed the limits of this work, were I to attempt 
 to give a full description of all the geographical circumstances 
 attending these singular terraces, or to discuss the ingenious 
 theories which have been severally proposed to account for 
 them by Dr. Macculloch, Sir T. Lauder, and Messrs. Darwin, 
 Agassiz, Milne, and Chambers. There is one point, how 
 ever, on which all are agreed, namely, that these shelves 
 are ancient beaches, or littoral formations, accumulated rotfad 
 the edges of one or more sheets of water which once stood for 
 a long time successively at the level of the several shelves. 
 
 It is well known, that wherever a lake or marine fiord 
 exists surrounded by steep mountains subject to disintegra 
 tion by frost or the action of torrents, some loose matter is 
 washed down annually, especially during the melting of snow, 
 and a check is given to the descent of this detritus at the 
 point where it reaches the waters of the lake. The waves then 
 spread out the materials along the shore, and throw some of 
 them upon the beach; their dispersing power being aided 
 by the ice, which often adheres to pebbles during the winter 
 months, and gives buoyancy to them. 
 The annexed diagram illustrates 
 the manner in which Dr. Maccul 
 loch and Mr. Darwin suppose 6 the 
 roads' to constitute mere excres 
 cences of the superficial alluvial 
 coating which rests upon the hill 
 side, and consists chiefly of clay 
 and sharp unrounded stones. 
 
 Among Other proofs that the A B. Supposed original surface 
 parallel roads have really been CD . Bo^tr shelves in the 
 
 formed along the margin of a sheet outer alluvial covering 
 
 of the hill. 
 
 of water, it may be mentioned, that 
 
 wherever an isolated hill rises in the middle of the glen above 
 
 the level of any particular shelf, as in Mealderry, Plate II., a 
 
256 THEORY OF AGASSIZ. CHAP. xm. 
 
 corresponding shelf is seen at the same level passing round 
 the hill, as would have happened if it had once formed an 
 island in a lake or fiord. Another very remarkable pecu 
 liarity in these terraces is this ; each of them comes in some 
 portion of its course to a col, or parting ridge between the 
 heads of glens, the explanation of which will be considered 
 in the sequel. 
 
 'Those writers who first advocated the doctrine that the 
 roads were the ancient beaches of freshwater lakes, were 
 unable to offer any probable hypothesis respecting the for 
 mation and subsequent removal of barriers of sufficient height 
 and solidity to dam up the water. To introduce any violent 
 convulsion for their removal was inconsistent with the unin 
 terrupted horizontality of the roads, and with the undisturbed 
 aspect of those parts of the glens where the shelves come 
 suddenly to an end. 
 
 Mr. Agassiz and Dr. Buckland, desirous, like the defenders 
 of the lake theory, to account for the limitation of the shelves 
 to certain glens, and their absence in contiguous glens, where 
 the rocks are of the same composition, and the slope and in 
 clination of the ground very similar, first started the theory 
 that these valleys were once blocked up by enormous glaciers 
 descending from Ben Nevis, giving rise to what are called, in 
 Switzerland and in the Tyrol, glacier-lakes. In corroboration 
 of this view, they contended that the alluvium of Grlen Roy, 
 as well as of other parts of Scotland, agrees in character with 
 the moraines of glaciers seen in the Alpine valleys of Switzer 
 land. It will readily be conceded that this hypothesis was 
 preferable to any previous lacustrine theory, by accounting 
 more easily for the temporary existence and entire disappear 
 ance of lofty transverse barriers, although the height required 
 for the supposed dams of ice appeared very enormous. 
 
 Before the idea of glacier-lakes had been suggested by 
 Agassiz, Mr. Darwin examined Glen Roy, and came to the 
 
CHAP. xiii. DAKWIN ON PARALLEL ROADS. 257 
 
 opinion that the shelves were formed when the glens were 
 still arms of the sea, and, consequently, that there never were 
 any seaward barriers. According to him, the land emerged 
 during a slow and uniform upward movement, like that now 
 experienced throughout a large part of Sweden and Finland ; 
 but there were certain pauses in the upheaving process, at 
 which times the waters of the sea remained stationary for so 
 many centuries as to allow of the accumulation of an extra 
 ordinary quantity of detrital matter, and the excavation, at 
 many points immediately above the sea-level, of deep notches 
 and bare cliffs in the hard and solid rock. 
 
 This theory I adopted in 1841 (' Elements,' 2nd ed.), as ap 
 pearing to me less objectionable than any other then proposed. 
 The phenomena most difficult to reconcile with it are, first, the 
 abrupt cessation of the roads at certain points in the different 
 glens ; secondly, their unequal number in different valleys 
 connecting with each other, there being three, for example, in 
 Glen Eoy, and only one in Grlen Spean ; thirdly, the precise 
 horizontality of level maintained by the same shelf over a space 
 many leagues in length, requiring us to assume, that during 
 a rise of 1,156 feet no one portion of the land was raised even 
 a few yards above another ; fourthly, the coincidence of level 
 already alluded to of each shelf with a col, or the point form 
 ing the head of two glens, from which the rain-waters flow 
 in opposite directions. This last-mentioned feature in the 
 physical geography of Lochaber Mr. Darwin endeavoured to 
 explain in the following manner. He called these cols 
 ( land-straits,' and regarding them as having been anciently 
 sounds or channels between islands, he pointed out that 
 there is a tendency in such sounds to be silted up, and 
 always the more so in proportion to their narrowness. In a 
 chart of the Falkland Islands, by Capt. Sullivan, E.N., it 
 appears that there are several examples there of straits where 
 the soundings diminish regularly towards the narrowest part. 
 
258 DARWIN ON PARALLEL ROADS. CHAP. xm. 
 
 One is so nearly dry that it can be walked over at low water, 
 and another, no longer covered by the sea, is supposed to 
 have recently dried up in consequence of a small alteration 
 in the relative level of sea and land. ( Similar straits,' 
 observes Mr. Chambers, 'hovering, in character, between 
 sea and land, and which may be called fords, are met with 
 in the Hebrides. Such, for example, is the passage dividing 
 the islands of Lewis and Harris, and that between North 
 Uist and Benbecula, both of which would undoubtedly appear 
 as cols, coinciding with a terrace or raised beach, all round 
 the islands if the sea were to subside.'* 
 
 The first of the difficulties above alluded to, namely, the 
 non-extension of the shelves over certain parts of the glens, 
 might be explained, said Mr. Darwin, by supposing in 
 certain places a quick growth of green turf on a good soil, 
 which prevented the rain from washing away any loose 
 materials lying on the surface. But wherever the soil was 
 barren, and where green sward took long to form, there may 
 have been time for the removal of the gravel. In one case 
 an intermediate shelf appears for a short distance (three 
 quarters of a mile) on the face of the mountain called Tomb- 
 hran, between the two upper shelves, and is seen nowhere 
 else. It occurs where there was the longest space of open 
 water, and where the waves may have acquired a more than 
 ordinary power to heap up detritus. 
 
 The unequal number of the shelves in valleys communi 
 cating with each other, and in which the boundary rocks are 
 similar in composition, and the general absence of any shelves 
 at corresponding altitudes in glens on the opposite watershed, 
 like that of the Spey, and in valleys where the waters flow 
 eastward, are difficulties attending the marine theory which 
 have never yet been got over. Mr. T. F. Jamieson, before 
 
 * Ancient Sea Margins, p. 114, by R. Chambers. 
 
CHAP. xin. THEORY OF AGASSIZ CONFIRMED. 259 
 
 cited, has, during a late visit to Lochaber, in 1861, observed 
 many facts highly confirmatory of the hypothesis of glacier- 
 lakes which, as I have already stated, was originally advanced 
 by Mr. Agassiz. In the first place, he found much superficial 
 scoring and polishing of rocks, and accumulation of boulders 
 at those points where signs of glacial action ought to appear, 
 if ice had once dammed up the waters of the glens in which 
 the 'roads' occur. Ben Nevis may have sent down its 
 glaciers from the south, and Glen Arkeg from the north, for 
 the mountains at the head of the last-mentioned glen are 
 3,000 feet high, and may, together with other tributary glens, 
 have helped to choke up the great Caledonian valley with ice, 
 so as to block up for a time the mouths of the Spean, Eoy, 
 and Grluoy. The temporary conversion of these glens into 
 glacier-lakes is the more conceivable, because the hills at 
 their upper ends not being lofty nor of great extent, they 
 may not have been filled with ice at a time when great 
 glaciers were generated in other adjoining and much higher 
 regions. 
 
 2ndly. The shelves, says Mr. Jamieson, are more precisely 
 defined and unbroken than any of the raised beaches or ac 
 knowledged ancient coast-lines visible on the west of Scotland, 
 as in Argyleshire, for example. 
 
 Srdly. At the level of the lower shelf in Grlen Koy, at points 
 where torrents now cut channels through the shelf as they 
 descend the hill-side, there are small delta-like extensions of 
 the shelf, perfectly preserved, as if the materials, whether fine 
 or coarse, had originally settled there in a placid lake, and 
 had not been acted upon by tidal currents, mingling them 
 with the sediment of other streams. These deltas are too 
 entire to allow us to suppose that they have at any time since 
 their origin been exposed to the waves of the sea. 
 
 4thly. The alluvium on the e cols' or watersheds, before 
 alluded to, is such as would have been formed if the waters 
 
 s 2 
 
260 PARALLEL ROADS OF GLEN ROY CHAP, xn 
 
 of the rivers had been made to flow east, or out of the upper 
 ends of the supposed glacier-lakes, instead of escaping at the 
 lower ends, in a westerly direction, where the great blockages 
 of ice are assumed to have occurred. 
 
 In addition to these arguments of Mr. Jamieson, I may 
 mention that in Switzerland, at present, no testacea live in 
 the cold waters of glacier-lakes ; so that the entire absence of 
 fossil shells, whether marine or freshwater, in the stratified 
 materials of each shelf, would be accounted for, if the 
 theory above mentioned be embraced. 
 
 When I examined 'the parallel roads' in 1825, in com 
 pany with Dr. Buckland, neither this glacier theory nor Mr. 
 Darwin's suggestion of ancient sea-margins had been pro 
 posed, and I have never since revisited Lochaber. But I 
 retain in my memory a vivid recollection of the scenery and 
 physical features of the district, and I now consider the 
 glacier-lake theory as affording by far the most satisfactory 
 solution of this difficult problem. The objection to it, which 
 until lately appeared to be the most formidable, and which 
 led Mr. Kobert Chambers in his ' Sea Margins ' to reject it 
 entirely, was the difficulty of conceiving how the waters could 
 be made to stand so high in Grlen Roy, as to allow the upper 
 most shelf to be formed. Grant a barrier of ice in the lower 
 part of the glen, of sufficient altitude to stop the waters from 
 flowing westward, still, what prevented them from escaping 
 over the c col ' at the head of Grlen Glaster ? This ' col ' coin 
 cides exactly in level, as Mr. Milne Home first ascertained, 
 with the second or middle shelf of Grlen Roy. The difficulty 
 here stated appears now to be removed by supposing that the 
 higher lines or roads were formed before the lower ones, and 
 when the quantity of ice was most in excess. We must ima 
 gine that at the time when the uppermost shelf of Grlen Roy 
 was forming in a shallow lake, the lower part of that glen 
 was filled up with ice, and, according to Mr. Jamieson, a 
 
CHAP. xin. DUE TO GLACIER-LAKES. 261 
 
 glacier from Loch Treig then protruded itself across Glen 
 Spean, and rested on the flank of the hill on the opposite side 
 in such a manner as effectually to prevent any water from 
 escaping over the Glen Glaster ' col.' The proofs of such a 
 glacier having actually existed at the point in question 
 consist, he says, in numerous cross striae observable in the 
 bottom of Glen Spean, and in the presence of moraine matter 
 in considerable abundance on the flanks of the hill extending 
 to heights above the Glen Glaster ' col.' When the ice 
 shrank into less dimensions the second shelf would be formed, 
 having its level determined by the col last mentioned, Glen 
 Spean in the meantime being filled with a glacier. Finally, 
 the ice blockage common to Glens Eoy, Spean, and Laggan, 
 which consisted probably of a glacier from Ben Nevis, gave 
 rise to the lowest and most extensive lake, the waters of 
 which escaped over the pass of Muckul or the ( col' at the head 
 of Loch Laggan, which, as Mr. Jamieson has now ascertained, 
 agrees precisely in level with the lowest of all the shelves, 
 and where there are unequivocal signs of a river having 
 flowed out for a considerable period. 
 
 Dr. Hooker has described some parallel terraces, very 
 analogous in their aspect to those of Glen Roy, as existing in 
 the higher valleys of the Himalaya, of which his pencil has 
 given us several graphic illustrations. He believes these 
 Indian shelves to have originated on the borders of glacier- 
 lakes, the barriers of which were usually formed by the ice 
 and moraines of lateral or tributary glaciers, which descended 
 into and crossed the main valley, as we have supposed in the 
 case of Glen Eoy; but others he ascribes to the terminal 
 moraine of the principal glacier itself, which had retreated 
 during a series of milder seasons, so as to leave an interval 
 between the ice and the terminal moraine. This interspace 
 caused by the melting of ice becomes filled with water and 
 forms a lake, the drainage of which usually takes place by 
 
262 COMPARATIVELY MODERN DATE OF THE CHAP. XIIT. 
 
 percolation through the porous parts of the moraine, and not 
 by a stream overflowing that barrier. Such a glacier-lake 
 Dr. Hooker actually found in existence near the head of the 
 Yangma valley in the Himalaya. It was moreover partially 
 bounded by recently formed marginal terraces or parallel 
 roads, implying changes of level in the barrier of ice and 
 moraine matter.* 
 
 It has been sometimes objected to the hypothesis of glacier- 
 lakes, as applied to the case of Glen Roy, that the shelves 
 must have taken a very long period for their formation. Such 
 a lapse of time, it is said, might be consistent with the theory 
 of pauses or stationary periods in the rise of the land during an 
 intermittent upward movement, but it is' hardly compatible 
 with the idea of so precarious and fluctuating a barrier as a 
 mass of ice. But the reader will have seen that the perma 
 nency of level in such glacier-lakes has no necessary con 
 nection with minor changes in the height of the supposed 
 dam of ice. If a glacier descending from higher mountains 
 through a tributary glen enters the main valley in which 
 there happens to be no glacier, the river is arrested in its 
 course and a lake is formed. The dam may be constantly 
 repaired and may vary in height several hundreds of feet 
 without affecting the level of the lake, so long as the surplus 
 waters escape over a c col' or parting ridge of rock. The 
 height at which the waters remain stationary is determined 
 solely by the elevation of the ' col,' and not by the barrier 
 of ice, provided the barrier is higher than the ' col.' 
 
 But if we embrace the theory of glacier-lakes, we must be 
 prepared to assume not only that the sea had nothing to do 
 with the original formation of the e parallel roads,' but that 
 it has never, since the disappearance of the lakes, risen in 
 any one of the glens up to the level of the lowest shelf, which 
 
 * Hooker, Himalaya Journal, vol. i. also profited by the author's personal 
 p. 242 ; ii. pp. 119, 121, 166. I have explanations. 
 
CHAP. xin. PARALLEL ROADS OP GLEN ROY. 263 
 
 is about 850 feet high ; for in that case the remarkable per 
 sistency and integrity of the roads and deltas, before described, 
 must have been impaired. 
 
 We have seen (p. 244) that fifty miles to the south of 
 Lochaber, the glacier formations of Lanarkshire with marine 
 shells of arctic character have been traced to the height of 
 524 feet. About fifty miles to the south-east in Perthshire 
 are those stratified clays and sands, near Killiecrankie, which 
 were once supposed to be of submarine origin, and which in 
 that case would imply the former submergence of what is now 
 dry land to the extent of 1,550 feet, or several hundred feet 
 beyond the highest of the parallel roads. Even granting 
 that these laminated drifts may have had a different origin, 
 as above suggested (p. 246), there are still many facts 
 connected with the distribution of erratics and the striation 
 of rocks in Scotland which are not easily accounted for with 
 out supposing the country to have sunk, since the era of con 
 tinental ice, to a greater depth than 525 feet, the highest 
 point to which marine shells have yet been traced. 
 
 After what was said of the pressure and abrading power of 
 a general crust of ice, like that now covering Greenland, it 
 is almost superfluous to say that the parallel roads must 
 have been of later date than such a state of things, for every 
 trace of them must have been obliterated by the movement of 
 such a mass of ice. It is no less clear, that as no glacier-lakes 
 can now exist in Greenland, so there could have been none 
 in Scotland, when the mountains were covered with one great 
 crust of ice. It may, however, be contended, that the parallel 
 roads were produced when the general crust of ice first gave 
 place to a period of separate glaciers, and that no period of 
 deep submergence ever intervened in Lochaber after the 
 time of the lakes. Even in that case, however, it is difficult 
 not to suppose that the G-len Eoy country participated in the 
 downward movement which sank part of Lanarkshire 525 
 
264 DATE OF GLEN EOT TERRACE LINES. CHAP. xm. 
 
 feet beneath the sea, subsequently to the first great glaciation 
 of Scotland (p. 244). Yet that amount of subsidence might 
 have occurred, and even a more considerable one, without 
 causing the sea to rise to the level of the lowest shelf, or to 
 a height of 850 feet above the present sea-level. 
 
 This is a question on which I am not prepared at present 
 to offer a decided opinion. 
 
 Whether the horizontally of the shelves or terrace-lines is 
 really as perfect as has been generally assumed, is a point 
 which will require to be tested by a more accurate trigono 
 metrical survey than has yet been made. The preservation 
 of precisely the same level in the lowest line throughout the 
 Grlens of Roy, Spean and Laggan, for a distance of twenty miles 
 east and west, and ten or twelve miles north and south, would 
 be very wonderful if ascertained with mathematical precision. 
 Mr. Jamieson, after making in 1862 several measurements 
 with a spirit-level, has been led to suspect a rise in the 
 lowest shelf of one foot in a mile in a direction from west to 
 east, or from the mouth of Grlen Roy to a point six miles 
 east of it in Grlen Spean. To confirm such observations, and 
 to determine whether a similar rate of rise continues eastward 
 as far as the pass of Muckul, would be most important. 
 
 On the whole, I conclude that the Grlen Roy terrace-lines 
 and those of some neighbouring valleys, were formed on the 
 borders of glacier-lakes, in times long subsequent to the 
 principal glaciation of Scotland. They may perhaps have 
 been nearly as late, especially the lowest of the shelves, as 
 that portion of the post-pliocene period in which man 
 coexisted in Europe with the mammoth. 
 
CHAP. xiv. EXTINCT GLACIERS IN WALES. 265 
 
 CHAPTEE XIV. 
 
 CHRONOLOGICAL RELATIONS OF THE GLACIAL PERIOD AND 
 THE EARLIEST SIGNS OF MAN'S APPEARANCE IN EUROPE, 
 
 Continued. 
 
 SIGNS OP EXTINCT GLACIERS IN WALES GEEAT SUBMERGENCE OP 
 WALES DURING THE GLACIAL PERIOD PROVED BY MARINE SHELLS 
 
 STILL GREATER DEPRESSION INFERRED FROM STRATIFIED DRIFT 
 
 SCARCITY OF ORGANIC REMAINS IN GLACIAL FORMATIONS SIGNS OF 
 
 EXTINCT GLACIERS IN ENGLAND ICE ACTION IN IRELAND MAPS 
 
 ILLUSTRATING SUCCESSIVE REVOLUTIONS IN PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY 
 
 DURING THE POST-PLIOCENE PERIOD SOUTHERNMOST EXTENT OP 
 
 ERRATICS IN ENGLAND SUCCESSIVE PERIODS OF JUNCTION AND SEPA 
 RATION OF ENGLAND, IRELAND, AND THE CONTINENT TIME REQUIRED 
 
 FOR THESE CHANGES PROBABLE CAUSES OF THE UPHEAVAL AND 
 
 SUBSIDENCE OF THE EARTH* S CRUST ANTIQUITY OF MAN CONSIDERED 
 
 LV RELATION TO THE AGE OF THE EXISTING FAUNA AND FLORA. 
 
 Extinct Glaciers in Wales. 
 
 considerable amount of vertical movement in opposite 
 J- directions, which was suggested in the last chapter, as 
 affording the most prohable explanation of the position of 
 some of the stratified and fossiliferous drifts of Scotland, 
 formed since the commencement of the glacial period, will 
 appear less startling, if it can be shown that independent 
 observations lead us to infer that a geographical revolution 
 of still greater magnitude accompanied the successive phases 
 of glaciation through which the Welsh mountains have passed. 
 That Wales was once an independent centre of the dis 
 persion of erratic blocks, has long been acknowledged. Dr. 
 Buckland published in 1842 his reasons for believing that 
 the Snowdonian mountains in Caernarvonshire were formerly 
 
266 WELSH GLACIAL DRIFT. CHAP. xiv. 
 
 covered with glaciers, which radiated from the central heights 
 through the seven principal valleys of that chain, where striae 
 and flutings are seen on the polished rocks directed towards 
 as many different points of the compass. He also described 
 the f moraines ' of the ancient glaciers, and the rounded 
 masses of polished rock, called in Switzerland ' roches mou- 
 tonnees.' His views respecting the old extinct glaciers of 
 North Wales were subsequently confirmed by Mr. Darwin, 
 who attributed the transport of many of the larger erratic 
 blocks to floating ice. Much of the Welsh glacial drift had 
 already been shown by Mr. Trimmer to have had a sub 
 marine origin, and Mr. Darwin maintained that when the 
 land rose again to nearly its present height, glaciers filled the 
 valleys, and f swept them clean of all the rubbish left by the 
 sea.' * 
 
 Professor Eamsay, in a paper read to the Geological Society 
 in 1851, and in a later work on the glaciation of North Wales, 
 described three successive glacial periods, during the first of 
 which the land was much higher than it now is, and the 
 quantity of ice excessive ; secondly, a period of submerg 
 ence when the land was 2,300 feet lower than at present, and 
 when the higher mountain tops only stood out of the sea as 
 a cluster of low islands, which nevertheless were covered 
 with snow ; and lastly, a third period when the marine boulder 
 drift formed in the middle period was ploughed out of the 
 larger valleys by a second set of glaciers, smaller than those 
 of the first period. This last stage of glaciation[may have coin 
 cided with that of the parallel roads of Glen Eoy, spoken of 
 in the last chapter. In Wales it was certainly preceded 
 by submergence, and the rocks had been exposed to glacial 
 polishing and friction before they sank. 
 
 Fortunately the evidence of the sojourn of the Welsh 
 
 * Philosophical Magazine, ser. 3, voL xxi. p. 180. 
 
CHAP. XIT. PROOFS OP SUBMERGENCE. 267 
 
 mountains beneath the waters of the sea is not deficient, as 
 in Scotland, in that complete demonstration which the 
 presence of marine shells affords. The late Mr. Trimmer 
 discovered such shells on Moel Tryfane, in North Wales, in 
 drift elevated 1,392 feet above the level of the sea. It 
 appears from his observations, and those of the late Edward 
 Forbes, corroborated by others of Professor Eamsay and 
 Mr. Prestwich, that about twelve species of shells, including 
 Fusus bamfius, F. antiquus, Venus striatula (Forbes and 
 Hanley), have been met with at heights of between 1,000 and 
 1,400 feet, in drift, reposing on a surface of rock which 
 had been previously exposed to glacial friction 'and striation. 
 The shells, as a whole, are those of the glacial period, 
 and not of the Norwich Crag. Two localities of these shells 
 in Wales, in addition to that first pointed out by Mr. Trimmer, 
 have since been observed by Professor Eamsay, who, however, 
 is of opinion that the amount of submergence can by no 
 means be limited to the extreme height to which the shells 
 happen to have been traced ; for drift of the same character 
 as that of Moel Tryfane extends continuously to the height 
 of 2,300 feet,* 
 
 Rarity of Organic Remains in Glacial Formations. 
 
 The general dearth of shells in such formations, below as 
 well as above the level at which Mr. Trimmer first found 
 them, deserves notice. Whether we can explain it or not, it 
 is a negative character which seems to belong very generally 
 to deposits formed in glacial seas. The porous nature of the 
 strata, and the length of time during which they have been 
 permeated by rain-water, may partly account, as we hinted in 
 a former chapter, for the destruction of organic remains. 
 
 * Eamsay, Quarterly Geological Journal, vol. viii. p. 372, 1852 
 
268 LIFE IN THE OCEAN AT GREAT DEPTHS. CHAP. xiv. 
 
 But it is also possible that they were originally scarce, for we 
 read of the waters of the sea being so freshened and chilled 
 by the melting of ice-bergs in some Norwegian and Icelandic 
 fiords, that the fish are driven away, and all the mollusca 
 killed. The moraines of glaciers are always from the first 
 devoid of shells, and if transported by ice-bergs to a distance, 
 and deposited where the ice melts, may continue as barren of 
 every indication of life, as they were when they originated. 
 
 Nevertheless, it may be said, on the other hand, that herds 
 of seals and walruses crowd the floating ice of Spitzbergen in 
 lat. 80 north, of which Mr. Lamont has recently given us a 
 lively picture,* and huge whales fatten on myriads of 
 pteropods in polar regions. It had been suggested that the 
 bottom of the sea, at the era of extreme submergence in 
 Scotland and Wales, was so deep as to reach the zero of 
 animal life, which, in part of the Mediterranean (the Egean, 
 for example), the late Edward Forbes fixed, after a long series 
 of dredgings, at 300 fathoms. But the shells of the glacial 
 drift of Scotland and Wales, when they do occur, are not 
 those of deep seas ; and, moreover, our faith in the unin 
 habitable state of the ocean at great depths has been rudely 
 shaken, by the recent discovery by Captain M'Clintock and 
 Dr. Wallich, of starfish in water more than a thousand fathoms 
 deep (7,560 feet !), midway between Greenland and Iceland. 
 That these radiata were really dredged up from the bottom, 
 and that they had been living and feeding there, appeared 
 from the fact that their stomachs were full of globigerina, of 
 which foraminiferous creatures, both living and dead, the oozy 
 bed of the ocean at that vast depth was found to be exclusively 
 composed. 
 
 Whatever may be the cause, the fact is certain, that over 
 large areas in Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, I might add 
 
 * Seasons with the Sea-Horses, 1861. 
 
CHAP. XIV. GLACIAL FOKMATIONS IN ENGLAND. 269 
 
 throughout the northern hemisphere en both sides of the 
 Atlantic, the stratified drift of the glacial period is very com 
 monly devoid of fossils, in spite of the occurrence here and 
 there, at the height of 500, 700, and even 1,400 feet, of marine 
 shells. These, when met with, belong, with few exceptions, 
 to known living species. I am therefore unable to agree with 
 Mr. Kjerulf that the amount of former submergence can be 
 measured by the extreme height at which shells happen to 
 have been found. 
 
 Glacial Formations in England. 
 
 The mountains of Cumberland and Westmoreland, and the 
 English lake district, afford equally unequivocal vestiges of ice- 
 Fig. 38 
 
 Dome-shaped rocks, or 'roches moutonnees,' in the valley of the Botha, 
 near Ambleside, from a drawing by E. Hull, F.G-.S.* 
 
 action not only in the form of polished and grooved surfaces, 
 but also of those rounded bosses before mentioned, as being so 
 abundant in the Alpine valleys of Switzerland, where glaciers 
 exist, or have existed. Mr. Hull has lately published a 
 faithful account of these phenomena, and has given a repre 
 sentation of some of the English 'roches moutonnees,' which 
 
 * Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, vol. xi. pi. i. p. 31, 1860. 
 
270 GLACIAL FORMATIONS IN IRELAND. CHAP. xiv. 
 
 precisely resemble hundreds of dome-shaped protuberances in 
 North Wales, Sweden, and North America.* 
 
 The marks of glaciation on the rocks, and the trans 
 portation of erratics from Cumberland to the eastward, have 
 been traced by Professor Phillips over a large part of York 
 shire, extending to a height of 1,500 feet above the sea; and 
 similar northern drift has been observed in Lancashire, 
 Cheshire, Derbyshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, and Worcester 
 shire. It is rare to find marine shells, except at heights of 
 200 or 300 feet ; but a few instances of their occurrence have 
 been noticed, especially of Turritella communis (a gregarious 
 shell), far in the interior, at elevations of 500 feet, and even 
 of 700 in Derbyshire, and some adjacent counties, as I learn 
 from Mr. Binney and Mr. Prestwich. 
 
 Such instances are of no small theoretical interest, as 
 enabling us to account for the scattering of large erratic 
 blocks at equal or much greater elevations, over a large part 
 of the northern and midland counties, such as could only 
 have been conveyed to their present sites by floating ice. 
 Of this nature, among others, is a remarkable angular block 
 of syenitic greenstone, four feet and a half by four feet square, 
 and two feet thick, which Mr. Darwin describes as lying on 
 the summit of Ashley Heath, in Staffordshire, 803 feet above 
 the sea, resting on new red sandstone, f 
 
 Signs of Ice-action and Submergence in Ireland during 
 the Glacial Period. 
 
 In Ireland we encounter the same difficulty as in Scotland, 
 in determining how much of the glaciation of the higher 
 mountains should be referred to land glaciers, and how much 
 
 * Hull, Edinburgh New Philoso- shire, Philosophical Magazine, series 
 phical Journal, July 1860. 3, xxi. p. 180. 
 
 f Ancient Glaciers of Caernarvon- 
 
CHAP. xiv. MAMMALIA SCARCE IN IRISH DRIFT. 271 
 
 to floating ice, during submergence. The signs of glacial 
 action have been traced by Professor Jukes to elevations 
 of 2,500 feet in the Killarney district, and to great heights 
 in other mountainous regions ; but marine shells have rarely 
 been met with higher than 600 feet above the sea, and that 
 chiefly in gravel, clay and sand in Wicklow and Wexford. 
 They are so rare in the drift east of the Wicklow mountains, 
 that an exception to the rule, lately observed at Ballymore 
 Eustace, by Professor Jukes, is considered as a fact of no small 
 geological interest. The wide extent of drift of the same 
 character, spread over large areas in Ireland, shows that the 
 whole island was, in some part of the glacial period, an archi 
 pelago, as represented in the maps, figs. 39, 40, pp. 276 
 and 278. 
 
 Speaking of the Wexford drift, the late Professor E. Forbes 
 states that Sir H. James found in it, together with many of 
 the usual glacial shells, several species which are characteristic 
 of the crag; among others the reversed variety of Fusus 
 antiquuSy called F. contrarius, and the extinct species 
 Nucula Cobboldice, and Turritella incrassata.* Perhaps a 
 portion of this drift of the south of Ireland may belong to 
 the close of the newer pliocene period, and may be of a some 
 what older date than the shells of the Clyde, alluded to at 
 p. 231. They may also correspond still more nearly in age 
 with the fauna of the uppermost strata of the Norwich Crag, 
 occurring at Chillesford, and alluded to p. 199. 
 
 The scarcity of mammalian remains in the Irish drift 
 favours the theory of its marine origin. In the superficial 
 deposits of the whole island, I have only met with three 
 recorded examples of the mammoth, one in the south near 
 Dungarvan, where the bones of Elephas primigenius, two 
 species of bear (Ursus Arctos, and Ursus spelceus?), the 
 
 * Forbes' Memoirs of Survey, &c., vol. i. p. 377. 
 
272 DRIFT AND BOULDERS IN IRELAND. CHAP. XIV. 
 
 rein-deer, horse, &c., were found in a cave ; * another in the 
 centre of the island near Belturbet, in the county of Cavan. 
 
 Perhaps the conversion into land of the bed of the glacial 
 sea, and the immigration into the newly upheaved region of 
 the elephant, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus, which coexisted 
 with the fabricators of the St. Acheul flint hatchets, were 
 events which preceded in time the elevation of the Irish 
 drift, and the union of that island with England. Ireland 
 may have continued for a longer time in the state of an 
 archipelago, and was therefore for a much shorter time 
 inhabited by the large extinct post-pliocene pachyderms. 
 
 In one of the reports of the geological survey of Ireland, 
 published in 1859, Professor Jukes, in explanation of sheet 
 184 of the maps, alludes to beds of sand and gravel, and signs 
 of the polishing and furrowing of the rocks in the counties 
 of Kerry and Killarney, as high as 2,500 feet above the sea, 
 and supposes (perhaps with good reason) that the land was 
 depressed even to that extent. He observes that above that 
 elevation (2,500 feet) the rocks are rough, and not smoothed, 
 as if by ice. Some of the drift was traced as high as 1,500 feet, 
 the highest hills there exceeding 3,400 feet. Mr. Jukes, how 
 ever, is by no means inclined to insist on submergence to 
 the extent of 2,500 feet, as he is aware that ice, like that 
 now prevailing in Greenland, might explain most, if not 
 all, the appearances of glaciation in the highest regions. 
 
 Although the course taken by the Irish erratics in general 
 is such that their transportation seems to have been due to 
 floating ice or coast-ice, yet some granite blocks have 
 travelled from south to north, as recorded by Sir E. Griffiths, 
 namely, those of the Ox Mountains in Sligo ; a fact from 
 which Mr. Jamieson infers that those mountains formed at 
 one time a centre of dispersion. In the same part of Ireland, 
 
 * E. Brenan and Dr. Carte, Dublin, 1859. 
 
CHAP. xiv. DRIFT AND BOULDERS IN IRELAND. 273 
 
 the general direction in which the boulders have travelled is 
 everywhere from north-west to south-east, a course directly 
 at right angles to the prevailing trend of the present 
 mountain ridges. 
 
 Maps illustrating successive Revolutions in Physical 
 Geography during the Post-pliocene Period. 
 
 The late Mr. Trimmer, before referred to, has endeavoured 
 to assist our speculations as to the successive revolutions in 
 physical geography, through which the British Islands have 
 passed since the commencement of the glacial period, by 
 four ' sketch maps ' as he termed them, in the first of 
 which he gave an ideal restoration of the original Conti 
 nental period, called by him the first elephantine period, or 
 that of the forest of Cromer, before described (p. 214). He 
 was not aware that the prevailing elephant of that era 
 (E. meridionalis) was distinct from the mammoth. At this 
 era he conceived Ireland and England to have been united 
 with each other and with France, but much of the area re 
 presented as land in the map, fig. 41, p. 279, was supposed 
 to be under water. His second map, of the great submergence 
 of the glacial period, was not essentially different from our map, 
 fig. 39, p. 276. His third map expressed a period of partial 
 re-elevation, when Ireland was reunited to Scotland and the 
 north of England ; but England still separated from France. 
 This restoration appears to me to rest on insufficient data, 
 being constructed to suit the supposed area over which the 
 gigantic Irish deer, or Megaceros, migrated from east to west, 
 also to explain an assumed submergence of the district called 
 the Wealden, in the south-east of England, which had re 
 mained land during the grand glacial submergence. 
 
 The fourth map is a return to nearly the same continental 
 conditions as the first Ireland, England, and the Continent 
 
 T 
 
274 MAPS ILLUSTRATING REVOLUTIONS CHAP. xiv. 
 
 being united. This he called the second elephantine period ; 
 and it would coincide very closely with that part of the post- 
 pliocene era in which man coexisted with the mammoth, and 
 when, according to Mr. Trimmer's hypothesis, the Thames 
 was a tributary of the Rhine.* 
 
 These geographical speculations were indulged in ten years 
 after Edward Forbes had published his bold generalisations 
 on the geological changes which accompanied the successive 
 establishment of the Scandinavian, Grermanic, and other living 
 floras and faunas in the British Islands, and, like the theories 
 of his predecessor, were the results of much reflection on a 
 vast body of geological facts. It is by repeated efforts of 
 this kind, made by geologists who are prepared for the partial 
 failure of some of their first attempts, that we shall ultimately 
 arrive at a knowledge of the long series of geographical 
 revolutions which have followed each other since the begin 
 ning of the post-pliocene period. 
 
 The map, fig. 39, p. 276, will give some idea of the great 
 extent of land which would be submerged, were we to infer, 
 as many geologists have done, from the joint evidence of 
 marine shells, erratics, glacial striae and stratified drift at 
 great heights, that Scotland was, during part of the glacial 
 period, 2,000 feet below its present level, and other parts of 
 the British Isles, 1,300 feet. A subsidence to this amount 
 can be demonstrated in the case of North Wales by marine 
 shells (see above, p. 267). In the lake district of Cumberland 
 and Yorkshire," and in Ireland, we must depend on proofs 
 derived from glacial striae and the transportation of erratics 
 for so much of the supposed submergence as exceeds 600 
 feet. As to central England, or the country north of the 
 Thames and Bristol Channel, marine shells of the glacial 
 period sometimes reach as high as 600 and 700 feet, and 
 erratics still higher, as we have seen above (p. 270). But 
 
 * Joshua Trimmer, Quarterly Geological Journal, vol. ix. plate xiii. 1853. 
 
CHAP. xiv. IN PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 275 
 
 this region is of such moderate elevation above the sea, that 
 it would be almost equally laid under water, were there a 
 sinking of no more than 600 feet. 
 
 To make this last proposition clear, I have constructed, 
 from numerous documents, many of them unpublished, the 
 map, fig. 40, given at p. 278, which shows how that small 
 amount of subsidence would reduce the whole of the British 
 Isles to an archipelago of very small islands, with the excep 
 tion of parts of Scotland, and the north of England and Wales, 
 where four islands of considerable dimensions would still 
 remain. 
 
 As to the district south of the Thames and the Bristol 
 Channel, it seems to have remained land during the whole of 
 the glacial period at a time when the northern area was 
 under water. 
 
 The map, fig. 40, p. 278, just alluded to, represents 
 simply the effects of a downward movement of a hundred 
 fathoms, or 600 English feet, supposed to have been uniform 
 over the whole of the British Isles. It shows the very dif 
 ferent state of the physical geography of the area in question, 
 when contrasted with the results of an opposite movement, 
 or one of upheaval, to an equal amount, of which Sir Henry 
 de la Beche had already given us a picture (from which I 
 have borrowed the map, fig. 41, p. 279), in his excellent 
 treatise called ' Theoretical Eesearches.' * 
 
 If we are surprised when looking at the first map, fig. 40 
 at the vast expanse of sea which so moderate a subsidence 
 as 600 feet would cause, we shall probably be still more 
 astonished to perceive, in fig. 41, that a rise of the same 
 number of feet would unite all the British Isles, including 
 the Hebrides, Orkneys, and Shetlands, with one another and 
 the continent, and lay dry the sea now separating Great 
 Britain from Sweden and Denmark. 
 
 * Also repeated in De la Beche' s Geological Observer. 
 T 2 
 
276 
 
 MAPS ILLUSTRATING REVOLUTIONS CHAP. xiv. 
 
 Fig. 39 
 
 MAP OF THE BRITISH ISLES AND PAET OF THE NORTH- WEST OF EUROPE, 
 SHOWING THE GREAT AMOUNT OF SUPPOSED SUBMERGENCE OF LAND 
 BENEATH THE SEA DURING PART OF THE GLACIAL PERIOD. 
 
 The submergence of Scotland is to the extent of 2,000 feet, and of 
 other parts of the British Isles, 1,300. 
 
 In the map, the dark shade expresses the land which alone remained 
 above water. The area shaded by diagonal lines is that which cannot be 
 shown to have been under water at the period of floating ice by the evi 
 dence of erratics, or by marine shells of northern species. How far the 
 several parts of the submerged area were simultaneously or successively 
 laid under water, 'in the course of the glacial period, cannot, in the present 
 state of our knowledge, be determined. 
 
CHAP. xiv. IN BRITISH PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 277 
 
 It appears from soundings made during various Admiralty 
 surveys, that the gained land thus brought above the level of 
 the sea, instead of presenting a system of hills and valleys 
 corresponding with those usually characterising the interior 
 of most of our island, would form a nearly level terrace, or 
 gently inclined plane, sloping outwards like those terraces of 
 denudation and deposition which I have elsewhere described 
 as occurring on the coasts of Sicily and the Morea.* 
 
 It seems that, during former and perhaps repeated oscil 
 lations of level undergone by the British Isles, the sea has 
 had time to cut back the cliffs for miles in many places, 
 while in others the detritus derived from wasting cliffs 
 drifted along the shores, together with the sediment brought 
 down by rivers and swept by currents into submarine valleys, 
 has exerted a levelling power, filling up such depressions as 
 may have pre-existed. Owing to this twofold action few 
 marked inequalities of level have been left on the sea-bottom, 
 the s silver-pits ' off the mouth of the Humber offering a 
 rare exception to the general rule, and even there the narrow 
 depression is less than 300 feet in depth. 
 
 Beyond the 100 fathom line, the submarine slope sur 
 rounding the British coast is so much steeper that a second 
 elevation of equal amount (or of 600 feet) would add but 
 slightly to the area of gained land ; in other words, the 100 
 and 200 fathom lines run very near each other. -j" 
 
 The naturalist would have been entitled to assume the 
 former union, within the post-pliocene period, of all the British 
 Isles with each other and with the continent, as expressed in 
 the map, fig. 41, even if there had been no geological facts in 
 favour of such a junction. For in no other way would he be 
 able to account for the identity of the fauna and flora found 
 throughout these lands. Had they been separated ever since 
 
 * Manual of Greology, p. 74. 
 
 f De la Beche, Geological Kesearches, p. 191. 
 
287 
 
 MAPS ILLUSTRATING REVOLUTIONS CHAP. xiv. 
 
 'Fig. 40 
 
 A. 
 
 MAP SHOWING WHAT PARTS OF THE BRITISH ISLANDS WOULD REMAIN 
 ABOVE WATER AFTER A SUBSIDENCE OF THE AREA TO THE EXTENT 
 OF 600 FEET. 
 
 The authorities to whom I am indebted for the information contained in this 
 map are for 
 
 SCOTLAND. A. Geikie, Esq., F.G.S. and T. F. Jamieson, Esq., of Ellon, Aber- 
 
 deenshire. 
 ENGLAND. For the counties of Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Durham 
 
 Col. Sir Henry James, E.E. 
 
 Dorsetshire, Hampshire, and Isle of Wight H. W. Bristow, Esq. 
 Gloucestershire, Somersetshire, and part of Devon E. Etheridge, Esq. 
 Kent and Sussex Frederick Drew, Esq. 
 , Isle of Man W. Whitaker, Esq. 
 
 IRELAND. Eeduced from a contour map constructed by Lieut. Larcom, E.E., 
 in 1837, for the Eailway Commissioners. 
 
CHAP. XIV. 
 
 IN BRITISH PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 
 Fig. 41 
 
 279 
 
 MAP OF PART OF THE NORTH-WEST OF EUROPE, INCLUDING THE BRITISH 
 ISLES, SHOWING THE EXTENT OF SEA WHICH WOULD BECOME LAND IF 
 THERE WERE A GENERAL RISE OF THE AREA TO THE EXTENT OF 600 
 FEET. 
 
 The darker shade expresses what is now land, the lighter shade the sj 
 intervening between the present coast line and the 100 fathom line, wl 
 would be converted by such a movement into land. 
 
280 REVOLUTIONS IN PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. CHAP. XIT. 
 
 the miocene period, like Madeira, Porto Santo, and the 
 Desertas, constituting the small Madeiran Archipelago, we 
 might have expected to discover a difference in the species 
 of land-shells, not only when Ireland was compared to Eng 
 land, but when different islands of the Hebrides were con 
 trasted one with another, and each of them with England. 
 It would not, however, be necessary, in order to effect the 
 complete fusion of the animals and plants which we witness, 
 to assume that all parts of the area formed continuous land 
 at one and the same moment of time, but merely that the 
 several portions were so joined within the post-pliocene era 
 as to allow the animals and plants to migrate freely in 
 succession from one district to another. 
 
 Southernmost Extent of Erratics in England. 
 
 In reference to that portion of the south of England which 
 is marked by diagonal lines in the map at p. 260, the theory 
 of its having been an area of dry land during the period of 
 great submergence and floating-ice does not depend merely 
 on negative evidence, such as the absence of the northern 
 drift or boulder clay on its surface ; but we have also, in favour 
 of the same conclusion, the remarkable fact of the presence of 
 erratic blocks on the southern coast of Sussex, implying the 
 existence there of an ancient coast-line at a period when the 
 cold must have been at its height. 
 
 These blocks are to be seen in greatest number at 
 Pagham and Selsea, fifteen miles south of Chichester, in 
 lat. 5040'N. 
 
 They consist of fragments of granite, syenite, and green 
 stone, as well as of Devonian and Silurian rocks, some of 
 them of large size. I measured one of granite at Pagham, 
 twenty-seven feet in circumference. They are not of nor 
 thern origin, but must have come from the coast of Nor- 
 
CHAP. xiv. ERRATICS IN SUSSEX. 281 
 
 mandy or Brittany, from land which may. once have existed 
 to the south-west, in what is now the English Channel. 
 
 They were probably drifted into their present site by coast 
 ice, and the yellow clay and gravel in which they are em 
 bedded are a littoral formation, as shown by the shells. 
 Beneath the gravel containing these large erratics, is a blue 
 mud in which skeletons of Elephas antiquus, and other 
 mammalia, have been observed. Still lower occurs a sandy 
 loam, from which Mr. E. Gr. Austen* has collected thirty- 
 eight species of marine shells, all recent, but forming an 
 assemblage differing as a whole from that now inhabiting 
 the English Channel. The presence among them of Lutraria 
 rugosa and Pecten polymorphus, not known to range 
 farther north in the actual seas than the coast of Portugal, 
 indicates a somewhat warmer temperature at the time when 
 they flourished. Subsequently, there must have been great 
 cold when the Selsea erratics were drifted" into their present 
 position, and this cold doubtless coincided in time with a low 
 temperature farther north. These transported rocks of Sussex 
 are somewhat older than a sea-beach with recent marine 
 shells which at Brighton is covered by chalk rubble, called 
 the ( elephant-bed,' which I cannot describe in this place, but 
 allude to it as one of many geological proofs of the former 
 existence of a seashore in this region, and of ancient cliffs 
 bounding the channel between France and England, all of 
 older date than the close of the glacial period. 
 
 In order to form a connected view of the most simple 
 series of changes in physical geography which can possibly 
 account for the phenomena of the glacial period, and the 
 period of the establishment of the present provinces of animals 
 and plants, the following geographical states of the British 
 and adjoining areas may be enumerated. 
 
 * Geological Quarterly Journal, TO!, xiii. p. 50. 
 
282 PERIODS OF JUNCTION AND SEPARATION CHAP. xiv. 
 
 First, a continental period, towards the close of which the 
 forest of Cromer flourished (p. 214) : when the land was at 
 least 500 feet above its present level, perhaps much higher, and 
 its extent probably greater than that given in the map, fig. 41. 
 
 Secondly, a period of submergence, by which the land 
 north of the Thames and Bristol Channel, and that of Ireland, 
 was gradually reduced to such an archipelago as is pictured 
 in map, fig. 40 ; and finally to such a general prevalence of 
 sea as is seen in map, fig. 39. This was the period of great 
 submergence and of floating ice, when the Scandinavian flora, 
 which occupied the lower grounds during the first continental 
 period, may have obtained exclusive possession of the only 
 lands not covered with perpetual snow. 
 
 Thirdly, a second continental period when the bed of the 
 glacial sea, with its marine shells and erratic blocks, was laid 
 dry, and when the quantity of land equalled that of the first 
 period, and therefore probably exceeded that represented in 
 the map, p. 279. During this period there were glaciers in 
 the higher mountains of Scotland and Wales, and the Welsh 
 glaciers, as we have seen, pushed before them and cleared 
 out the marine drift with which some valleys had been filled 
 during the period of submergence. The parallel roads of 
 Grlen Eoy are referable to some part of the same era. 
 
 As a reason for presuming that the land which in map, 
 fig. 41, p. 279, is only represented as 600 feet above its present 
 level, was during part of this period much higher, Professor 
 Ramsay has suggested that, as the previous depression far 
 exceeded a hundred fathoms (amounting in Wales to 1,400 
 feet, as shown by marine shells, and to 2,300, by stratified 
 drift), it is not improbable that the upward movement was on 
 a corresponding scale. 
 
 In passing from the period of chief submergence to this 
 second continental condition of things, we may conceive a 
 gradual change first from that of map 39 to map 40, then 
 
CHAP. xiv. OF ENGLAND, IRELAND, AND THE CONTINENT. 283 
 
 from the latter phase to that of map 41, and finally to still 
 greater accessions of land. During this last period the 
 passage of the Germanic flora into the British area took place, 
 and the Scandinavian plants, together with northern insects, 
 birds, and quadrupeds, retreated into the higher grounds. 
 
 The first appearance of man, when, together with the mam 
 moth and woolly rhinoceros, or with the Elephas antiquus, 
 Rhinoceros liemitwchus, and Hippopotamus major, he ranged 
 freely from all parts of the continent into the British area, 
 belongs probably to a late portion of this second continental 
 period. 
 
 Fourthly, the next and last change comprised the break 
 ing up of the land of the British area once more into nu 
 merous islands, ending in the present geographical condition 
 of things. There were probably many oscillations of level 
 during this last conversion of continuous land into islands, 
 and such movements in opposite directions would account for 
 the occurrence of marine shells at moderate heights above 
 the level of the sea, notwithstanding a general lowering of the 
 land. To the close of this era belong the marine deposits of 
 the Clyde and the Carses of the Tay and Forth, before alluded 
 to, pp. 47, 51, 54. 
 
 In a memoir by Professor E. Forbes, before cited, he 
 observes, that the land of passage by which the plants and 
 animals migrated into Ireland consisted of the upraised 
 marine drift which had previously formed the bottom of the 
 glacial sea. Portions of this drift extend to the eastern shores 
 of Wicklow and Wexford, others are found in the Isle of Man 
 full of arctic shells, others on the British coast opposite 
 Ireland. The freshwater marl, containing numerous skeletons 
 of the great deer, or Megaceros, overlie in the Isle of Man that 
 marine glacial drift. Professor Forbes also remarks that the 
 subsequent disjunction of Ireland from England, or the for 
 mation of the St. George's Channel, which is less than 400 
 
284 PEKIODS OF JUNCTION AND SEPARATION CHAP. xiv. 
 
 feet in its greatest depth, preceded the opening of the Straits 
 of Dover, or the final separation of England from the Conti 
 nent. This he inferred from the present distribution of 
 species both in the animal and vegetable kingdoms. Thus 
 for example, there are twice as many reptiles in Belgium as 
 in England, and the number inhabiting England is twice 
 that found in Ireland. Yet the Irish species are all com 
 mon to England, and all the English to Belgium. It is there 
 fore assumed that the migration of species westward having 
 been the work of time, there was not a sufficient lapse of ages 
 to complete the fusion of the continental and British rep 
 tilian fauna, before France was separated from England and 
 England from Ireland. 
 
 For the same reason there are also a great number of birds 
 of short flight, and small quadrupeds, inhabiting England 
 which do not cross to Ireland, the St. Greorge's Channel 
 seeming to have arrested them in their westward course.* 
 
 The depth of the St. Greorge's Channel in the narrower 
 parts is only 360 feet, and the English Channel between 
 Dover and Calais less than 200, and rarely anywhere 
 more than 300 feet ; so that vertical movements of slight 
 amount compared to some of those previously considered, 
 with the aid of denuding operations or the waste of sea cliffs, 
 and the scouring out of the channel, might in time effect the 
 insulation of the lands above alluded to. 
 
 Time required for successive Changes in Physical Geo 
 graphy in the Post-Pliocene Period. 
 
 The time which it would require to bring about such 
 changes of level, according to the average rate assumed at 
 p. 58, however vast, will not be found to exceed that which 
 
 * E. Forbes, Fauna and Flora of British Isles ; Memoirs of Geological Survey, 
 Tol. i. p. 344, 1846. 
 
CHAP. xiv. OF ENGLAND, IRELAND, AND THE CONTINENT. 285 
 
 would best explain the successive fluctuations in terrestrial 
 temperature, the glaciation of solid rocks, the transpor 
 tation of erratics above and below the sea level, the height 
 of arctic shells above the sea, and last, not least, the migra 
 tion of the existing species of animals and plants into their 
 actual stations, and the extinction of some conspicuous 
 forms which flourished during the post-pliocene ages. When 
 we duly consider all these changes which have taken place 
 since the beginning of the glacial epoch, or since the Forest 
 of Cromer and the Elephas meridionalis flourished, we shall 
 find that the phenomena become more and more intelligible 
 in proportion to the slowness of the rate of elevation and 
 depression which we assume. 
 
 The submergence of Wales to the extent of 1,400 feet, as 
 proved by glacial shells, would require 56,000 years, at the 
 rate of 2 j- feet per century ; but taking Professor Eamsay's 
 estimate of 800 feet more, as stated at p. 267, that elevation 
 being required for the deposition of some of the stratified drift, 
 we must demand an additional period of 32,000 years, amount 
 ing in all to 88,000 ; and the same time would be required for 
 the re-elevation of the tract to its present height. But if the 
 land rose in the second continental period no more than 
 600 feet above the present level, as in map, p. 279, this 600 
 feet would have taken another 26,000 years ; the whole of the 
 grand oscillation, comprising the submergence and re-emer 
 gence, having taken, in round numbers, 180,000 years for its 
 completion ; and this, even if there were no pause or stationary 
 period, when the downward movement ceased, and before it 
 was converted into an upward one. 
 
 I am aware that it may be objected that the average rate 
 here proposed is a purely arbitrary and conjectural one, 
 because, at the North Cape, it is supposed that there has been 
 a rise of about six feet in a century, and at Spitzbergen, 
 according to Mr. Lamont, a still faster upheaval during the 
 
286 TIME REQUIRED FOR CHANGES OF LEVEL, CHAP. xiv. 
 
 last 400 years.* But, granting that in these and some ex 
 ceptional cases (none of them as yet very well established) 
 the rising or sinking has, for a time, been accelerated, I do 
 not believe the average rate of motion to exceed that above 
 proposed. Mr. Darwin, I find, considers that such a mean 
 rate of upheaval would be as high as we could assume for 
 the west coast of South America, where we have more evidence 
 of sudden changes of level than anywhere else. He has 
 not, however, attempted to estimate the probable rate of 
 secular elevation in that or any other region. 
 
 Little progress has yet been made in divining the most 
 probable causes of these great movements of the earth's crust ; 
 yet what little we know of the state of the interior leads us 
 to expect that the gradual expansion or contraction of large 
 portions of the solid crust may be the result of fluctuations in 
 temperature, with which the existence of hundreds of active 
 and thousands of extinct volcanoes is probably connected. 
 
 It is ascertained that solid rocks, such as granite and 
 sandstone, expand and contract annually, even under such 
 a moderate range of temperature as that of a Canadian 
 winter and summer. If the heat should go on increasing 
 through a thickness, say only of ten miles of the earth's 
 crust, the gradual upheaval . of the incumbent mass may 
 amount to many hundreds of feet ; and the elevation may be 
 carried still farther, by the complete fusion of part of the 
 inferior rocks. 
 
 According to the experiments of Deville, the contraction 
 of granite, in passing from a melted, or as some would say its 
 plastic condition, to a solid state, must be more than ten 
 per cent.f So that we have at our command a source of 
 depression on a grand scale, at every period when granitic 
 
 * Seasons with the Sea-Horses, p. 202. 
 
 f Bulletin de la Societe Greologique, 2nd series, vol. iv. p. 1312. 
 
CHAP. xiv. AND PROBABLE CAUSES OF MOVEMENTS. 287 
 
 rocks have originated in the interior of the earth's crust. 
 All mineralogists are agreed that the passage of voluminous 
 masses, from a liquid or pasty to a solid and crystalline 
 state, must be an extremely slow process. It may often 
 happen that, in the same series of superimposed rocks, some 
 are expanding while still solid or while partially melting, while 
 others are at the same time crystallising and contracting ; so 
 that the alterations of level at the surface may be the result 
 of complicated and often of conflicting agencies. The more 
 gradually we conceive such changes to take place, the more 
 comprehensible they become in the eyes of the chemist 
 and natural philosopher who speculates on the changes of 
 the earth's interior ; and the more fertile are they in the 
 hands of the geologist in accounting for revolutions on the 
 habitable surface. 
 
 We may presume, that after the movement has gone on for 
 a long time in one determinate direction, whether of eleva 
 tion or depression, the change to an opposite movement, 
 implying the substitution of a heating for a refrigerating 
 operation, or the reverse, would not take place suddenly ; but 
 would be marked by a period of inaction, or of slight move 
 ment, or such a state of quiescence, as prevails throughout 
 large areas of dry land in the normal condition of the 
 globe. 
 
 I see no reason for supposing that any part of the revo 
 lutions in physical geography, to which the maps above 
 described have reference, indicate any catastrophes greater 
 than those which the present generation has witnessed. If 
 man was in existence when the Cromer forest was becoming 
 submerged, he would have felt no more alarm than the 
 Danish settlers on the east coast of Baffin's Bay, when they 
 found the poles, which they had driven into the beach to 
 secure their boats, had subsided below their original level. 
 
 Already, perhaps, the melting ice has thrown down till 
 
288 CAUSES OF UPHEAVAL AND SUBSIDENCE. CHAP. xiv. 
 
 and boulders upon those poles, a counterpart of the boulder 
 clay which overlies the forest-bed on the Norfolk cliffs. 
 
 We have seen that all the plants and shells, marine and 
 freshwater, of the forest bed, and associated fluvio-marine 
 strata of Norfolk, are specifically identical with those of the 
 living European flora and fauna ; so that if upon such a 
 stratum a deposit of the present period, whether freshwater 
 or marine, should be thrown down, it might lie conformably 
 over it, and contain the same invertebrate fauna and flora. 
 The strata so superimposed would, in ordinary geological 
 language, be called contemporaneous, not only as belonging 
 to the same epoch, but as appertaining strictly to the same 
 subdivision of one and the same epoch ; although they would 
 in fact have been separated by an interval of several hundred 
 thousand years. 
 
 If, in the lower of the two formations, some of the 
 mammalia of the genera elephant and rhinoceros were 
 found to be distinct in species from those of the same genera 
 in the upper or ' recent ' stratum, it might appear as though 
 there had been a sudden coming in of new forms, and a 
 sudden dying out of old ones; for there would not have 
 been time in the interval for any perceptible change in the 
 invertebrate fauna, by which alone we usually measure the 
 lapse of time in the older formations. 
 
 When we are contrasting the vertebrate contents of two 
 sets of superimposed strata of the cretaceous, oolitic, or any 
 other ancient formation in which the shells are identical in 
 species, we ought never to lose sight of the possibility of 
 their having been separated by such intervals or by two or three 
 thousand centuries. That number of years may sometimes 
 be of small moment in reference to the rate of fluctuation of 
 species in the lower animals, but very important when the 
 succession of forms in the highest classes of vertebrata is 
 concerned. 
 
CHAP. xiv. MAN'S AGE IN EELATION TO PRESENT FAUNA. 289 
 
 If we reflect on the long series of events of the post- 
 pliocene and recent periods contemplated in this chapter, it 
 will be remarked that the time assigned to the first appear 
 ance of man, so far as our geological inquiries have yet gone, is 
 extremely modern in relation to the age of the existing fauna 
 and flora, or even to the time when most of the living species 
 of animals and plants attained their actual geographical 
 distribution. At the same time it will also be seen, that if 
 the advent of man in Europe occurred before the close of 
 the second continental period, and antecedently to the se 
 paration of Ireland from England and of England from the 
 continent, the event would be sufficiently remote to cause the 
 historical period to appear quite insignificant in duration, 
 when compared to the antiquity of the human race. 
 
;290 EXTINCT GLACIERS OF SWITZERLAND. CHAP. xv. 
 
 CHAPTEE XV. 
 
 EXTINCT GLACIERS OF THE ALPS AND THEIR CHRONOLOGICAL 
 RELATION TO THE HUMAN PERIOD. 
 
 EXTINCT GLACD3RS OF SWITZERLAND ALPINE ERRATIC BLOCKS ON 
 
 THE JURA NOT TRANSPORTED BY FLOATING ICE EXTINCT GLACIERS 
 
 OF THE ITALIAN SIDE OF THE ALPS THEORY OF THE ORIGIN OF 
 
 LAKE-BASINS BY THE EROSIVE ACTION OF GLACIERS, CONSIDERED 
 
 SUCCESSIVE PHASES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF GLACIAL ACTION IN THE 
 ALPS PROBABLE RELATION OF THESE TO THE EARLIEST KNOWN DATE 
 
 OF MAN CORRESPONDENCE OF THE SAME WITH SUCCESSIVE CHANGES 
 
 IN THE GLACIAL CONDITION OF THE SCANDINAVIAN AND BRITISH MOUN 
 TAINS COLD PERIOD IN SICILY AND SYRIA. 
 
 Extinct Glaciers of Switzerland. 
 
 WE have seen in the preceding chapters that the mountains 
 of Scandinavia, Scotland, and North Wales have served, 
 during the glacial period, as so many independent centres 
 for the dispersion of erratic blocks, just as at present the ice- 
 covered continent of North Greenland is sending down ice 
 in all directions to the coast, and filling Baffin's Bay with 
 floating bergs, many of them laden with fragments of rocks. 
 
 Another great European centre of ice-action during the post- 
 pliocene period was the Alps of Switzerland, and I shall now 
 proceed to consider the chronological relations of the extinct 
 Alpine glaciers to those of more northern countries pre 
 viously treated of. 
 
 The Alps lie far south of the limits of the northern drift 
 described in the foregoing pages, being situated between the 
 44th and 47th degrees of north latitude. On the flanks of 
 these mountains, and on the sub Alpine ranges of hills or 
 
CHAP. XV. THEIR GREAT EXTENT. 291 
 
 plains adjoining them, those appearances which have been 
 so often alluded to, as distinguishing or accompanying the 
 drift, between the 50th and 70th parallels of north latitude, 
 suddenly reappear and assume, in a southern region, a truly 
 arctic development. Where the Alps are highest, the largest 
 erratic blocks have been sent forth; as, for example, from 
 the regions of Mont Blanc and Monte Rosa, into the adjoin 
 ing parts of Switzerland and Italy ; while in districts where 
 the great chain sinks in altitude, as in Carinthia, Carniola, 
 and elsewhere, no such rocky fragments, or a few only and 
 of smaller bulk, have been detached and transported to a 
 distance. 
 
 In the year 1821, M. Venetz first announced his opinion 
 that the Alpine glaciers must formerly have extended far 
 beyond their present limits, and the proofs appealed to by 
 him in confirmation of this doctrine were afterwards ac 
 knowledged by M. Charpentier, who strengthened them by 
 new observations and arguments, and declared, in 1836, his 
 conviction that the glaciers of the Alps must once have 
 reached as far as the Jura, and have carried thither their 
 moraines across the great valley of Switzerland. M. Agassiz, 
 after several excursions in the Alps with M. Charpentier, 
 and after devoting himself some years to the study of glaciers, 
 published, in 1840, an admirable description of them and of 
 the marks which attest the former action of great masses of 
 ice over the entire surface of the Alps and the surrounding 
 country.* He pointed out that the surface of every large 
 glacier is strewed over with gravel and stones detached from 
 the surrounding precipices by frost, rain, lightning, or ava 
 lanches. And he described more carefully than preceding 
 writers the long lines of these stones, which settle on the 
 sides of the glacier, and are called the lateral moraines ; those 
 
 * Agassiz, Etudes sur les Glaciers et Systeme Grlaciaire. 
 u 2 
 
292 OSCILLATIONS OF ALPINE GLACIERS. CHAP. xv. 
 
 found at the lower end of the ice being called terminal 
 moraines. Such heaps of earth and boulders every glacier 
 pushes before it when advancing, and leaves behind it when 
 retreating. When the Alpine glacier reaches a lower and 
 a warmer situation, about 3,000 or 4,000 feet above the sea, 
 it melts so rapidly that, in spite of the downward movement 
 of the mass, it can advance no farther. Its precise limits are 
 variable from year to year, and still more so from century to 
 century ; one example being on record of a recession of half 
 a mile in a single year. We also learn from M. Venetz, that 
 whereas, between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries, all the 
 Alpine glaciers were less advanced than now, they began in 
 the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to push forward, so 
 as to cover roads formerly open, and to overwhelm forests of 
 ancient growth. 
 
 These oscillations enable the geologist to note the marks 
 which a glacier leaves behind it as it retrogrades ; and among 
 these the most prominent, as before stated, are the terminal 
 moraines, or mounds of unstratified earth and stones, often 
 divided by subsequent floods into hillocks, which cross the 
 valley like ancient earth-works, or embankments made to 
 dam up a river. Some of these transverse barriers were 
 formerly pointed out by Saussure below the glacier of the 
 Rhone, as proving how far it had once transgressed its present 
 boundaries. On these moraines we see many large angular 
 fragments, which, having been carried along the surface of 
 the ice, have not had their edges worn off by friction ; but 
 the greater number of the boulders, even those of large size, 
 have been well rounded, not by the power of water, but by 
 the mechanical force of the ice, which has pushed them 
 against each other, or against the rocks flanking the valley. 
 Others have fallen down the numerous fissures which intersect 
 the glacier, where, being subject to the pressure of the whole 
 mass of ice, they have been forced along, and either well 
 
CHAP. xv. MOEAINES AND GLACIAL FURROWS. 293 
 
 rounded or ground down into sand, or even the finest mud, 
 of which the moraine is largely constituted. 
 
 As the terminal moraines are the most prominent of all the 
 monuments left by a receding glacier, so are they the most 
 liable to obliteration ; for violent floods or debacles are some 
 times occasioned in the Alps by the sudden bursting of 
 glacier-lakes, or those temporary sheets of water before al 
 luded to, which are caused by the damming up of a river by 
 a glacier which has increased during a succession of cold 
 seasons, and descending from a tributary into the main valley, 
 has crossed it from side to side. On the failure of this icy 
 barrier, the accumulated waters, being let loose, sweep away 
 and level many a transverse mound of gravel and loose 
 boulders below, and spread their materials in confused and 
 irregular beds over the river-plain. 
 
 Another mark of the former action of glaciers, in situa 
 tions where they exist no longer, is the polished, striated, and 
 grooved surfaces of rocks before described. Stones which lie 
 underneath the glacier and are pushed along by it, sometimes 
 adhere to the ice, and as the mass glides slowly along at the 
 rate of a few inches, or at the utmost two or three feet, per 
 day, abrade, groove, and polish the rock, and the larger 
 blocks are reciprocally grooved and polished by the rock on 
 their lower sides. As the forces both of pressure and propul 
 sion are enormous, the sand, acting like emery, polishes the 
 surface ; the pebbles, like coarse gravers, scratch and furrow 
 it ; and the large stones scoop out grooves in it. Lastly, pro 
 jecting eminences of rock, called 'roches moutonnees' (see 
 above, p. 269), are smoothed and worn into the shape of 
 flattened domes where the glaciers have passed over them. 
 
 Although the surface of almost every kind of rock, when 
 exposed to the open air, wastes away by decomposition, yet 
 some retain for ages their polished and furrowed exterior : 
 and, if they are well protected by a covering of clay or turf, 
 
294 ALPINE ERRATICS ON THE JURA. CHAP. xv. 
 
 these marks of abrasion seem capable of enduring for ever. 
 They have been traced in the Alps to great heights above the 
 present glaciers, and to great horizontal distances beyond 
 them. 
 
 Another effect of a glacier is to lodge a ring of stones 
 round the summit of a conical peak which may happen to 
 project through the ice. If the glacier is lowered greatly by 
 melting, these circles of large angular fragments, which are 
 called ' perched blocks,' are left in a singular situation near 
 the top of a steep hill or pinnacle, the lower parts of which 
 may be destitute of boulders. 
 
 Alpine erratic Blocks on the Jura. 
 
 Now some or all the marks above enumerated, the mo 
 raines, erratics, polished surfaces, domes, striae, and perched 
 rocks are observed in the Alps at great heights above the 
 present glaciers, and far below their actual extremities; also in 
 the great valley of Switzerland, fifty miles broad ; and almost 
 everywhere on the Jura, a chain which lies to the north of 
 this valley. The average height of the Jura is about one- 
 third that of the Alps, and it is now entirely destitute of 
 glaciers; yet it presents almost everywhere moraines, and 
 polished and grooved surfaces of rocks. The erratics, more 
 over, which cover it present a phenomenon which has as 
 tonished and perplexed the geologist for more than half a 
 century. No conclusion can be more incontestable than that 
 these angular blocks of granite, gneiss, and other crystalline 
 formations, came from the Alps, and that they have been 
 brought for a distance of fifty miles and upwards across one of 
 the widest and deepest valleys of the world ; so that they are 
 now lodged on the hills and valleys of a chain composed of 
 limestone and other formations, altogether distinct from those 
 of the Alps. Their great size and angularity, after a journey 
 
CHAP. xv. GREAT ICE-SHEET OF SWITZERLAND. 295 
 
 of so many leagues, has justly excited wonder, for hundreds 
 of them are as large as cottages ; and one in particular, com 
 posed of gneiss, celebrated under the name of Pierre a Bot, 
 rests on the side of a hill about 900 feet above the lake of 
 Neufchatel, and is no less than forty feet in diameter. But 
 there are some far-transported masses of granite and gneiss 
 which are still larger, and which have been found to contain 
 50,000 and 60,000 cubic feet of stone ; and one limestone block 
 at Devens, near Bex, which has travelled thirty miles, contains 
 161,000 cubic feet, its angles being sharp and unworn. 
 
 Von Buch, Escher, and Studer inferred, from an exami 
 nation of the mineral composition of the boulders, that those 
 resting on the Jura, opposite the lakes of Greneva and Neuf- 
 chatel, have come from the region of Mont Blanc and the 
 Valais, as if they had followed the course of the Bhone, to the 
 lake of Greneva, and had then pursued their way uninter 
 ruptedly in a northerly direction. 
 
 M. Charpentier, who conceived the Alps in the period of 
 greatest cold to have been higher by several thousand feet 
 than they are now, had already suggested that the Alpine 
 glaciers once reached continuously to the Jura, conveying 
 thither the large erratics in question.* M. Agassiz, on the 
 other hand, instead of introducing distinct and separate 
 glaciers, imagined that the whole valley of Switzerland might 
 have been filled with ice, and that one great sheet of it ex 
 tended from the Alps to the Jura, the two chains being of the 
 same height as now relatively to each other. To this idea it 
 was objected that the difference of altitude, when distributed 
 over a space of 50 miles, would give an inclination of 
 two degrees only, or far less than that of any known 
 glacier. In spite of this difficulty, the hypothesis has since 
 received the support of Professor James Forbes, in his very 
 able work on the Alps, published in 1843. 
 
 * D'Arduac, Histoire des Progress, &c. torn. ii. p. 249. 
 
296 GLACIERS OF CHILIAN ANDES. CHAP. xv. 
 
 In 1841, I advanced, jointly with Mr. Darwin,* the theory 
 that the erratics may have been transferred by floating ice to 
 the Jura, at the time when the greater part of that chain, and 
 the whole of the Swiss valley to the south, was under the sea. 
 We pointed out, that if at that period the Alps had attained 
 only half their present altitude, they would yet have con 
 stituted a chain as lofty as the Chilian Andes, which, in a 
 latitude corresponding to Switzerland, now send down glaciers 
 to the head of every sound, from which icebergs, covered with 
 blocks of granite, are floated seaward. Opposite that part of 
 Chili where the glaciers abound, is situated the island of 
 Chiloe, one hundred miles in length, with a breadth of thirty 
 miles, running parallel to the continent. The channel which 
 separates it from the main land is of considerable depth, and 
 twenty-five miles broad. Parts of its surface, like the adja 
 cent coast of Chili, are overspread with recent marine shells, 
 showing an upheaval of the land during a very modern period ; 
 and beneath these shells is a boulder deposit, in which 
 Mr. Darwin found large blocks of granite and syenite, which 
 had evidently come from the Andes. 
 
 A continuance in future of the elevatory movement, now 
 observed to be going on in this region of the Andes and of 
 Chiloe, might cause the former chain to rival the Alps in 
 altitude, and give to Chiloe a height equal to that of the Jura. 
 The same rise might dry up the channel between Chiloe and 
 the main land, so that it would then represent the great 
 valley of Switzerland. 
 
 Sir Koderick I. Murchison, after making several impor 
 tant geological surveys of the Alps, proposed, in 1849, a 
 theory agreeing essentially with that suggested by Mr. Dar 
 win and myself, viz. that the erratics were transported to the 
 Jura, at a time when the great strath of Switzerland, and 
 
 * See Elements of Geology, 2nd ed. 1841. 
 
CHAP. XV. THEORIES OF CHARPENTIER AND GUYOT. 297 
 
 many valleys receding far into the Alps, were under water. 
 He thought it impossible that the glacial detritus of the 
 Rhone could ever have been carried to the Lake of Geneva, 
 and beyond it by a glacier, or that so vast a body of ice 
 issuing from one narrow valley could have spread its erratics 
 over the low country of the Cantons of Vaud, Friburg, Berne, 
 and Soleure, as well as the slopes of the Jura, comprising a 
 region of about a hundred miles in breadth from south-west 
 to north-east, as laid down in the map of Charpentier. He 
 therefore imagined the granitic blocks to have been trans 
 lated to the Jura by ice- floats when the intermediate country 
 was submerged.* It may be remarked that this theory, pro 
 vided the water be assumed to have been salt or brackish, 
 demands quite as great an oscillation in the level of the land 
 as that on which Charpentier had speculated, the only differ 
 ence being that the one hypothesis requires us to begin with 
 a subsidence of 2,500 or 3,000 feet, and the other, with an 
 elevation to the same amount. We should also remember 
 that the crests or watersheds of the Alps and Jura are about 
 eighty miles apart, and if once we suppose them to have been 
 in movement during the glacial period, it is very probable 
 that the movements at such a distance may not have been 
 strictly uniform. If so, the Alps may have been relatively 
 somewhat higher, which would greatly have facilitated the 
 extension of Alpine glaciers to the flanks of the less elevated 
 chain. 
 
 Five years before the publication of the memoir last men 
 tioned, M. Oruyot had brought forward a great body of new 
 facts in support of the original doctrine of Charpentier, that 
 the Alpine glaciers once reached as far as the Jura, and that 
 they had deposited thereon a portion of their moraines.f 
 The scope of his observations and argument was laid with 
 
 * Quarterly Geological Journal, f Bulletin de la Societe des Sciences 
 
 1850, vol. vi. p. 65. Naturelles de Neufchatel, 1845. 
 
298 ORDERLY DISTRIBUTION OF ALPINE ERRATICS. CHAF. xv. 
 
 great clearness before the British public in 1852 by Mr. 
 Charles Maclaren, who had himself visited Switzerland for 
 the sake of forming an independent opinion on a theoretical 
 question of so much interest, and on which so many eminent 
 men of science had come to such opposite conclusions.* 
 
 M. Gruyot had endeavoured to show that the Alpine erratics, 
 instead of being scattered at random over the Jura and the 
 great plain of Switzerland, are arranged in a certain deter 
 minate order, strictly analogous to that which ought to 
 prevail if they had once constituted the lateral, medial, and 
 terminal moraines of great glaciers. The rocks chiefly relied 
 on as evidence of this distribution consist of three varieties of 
 granite, besides gneiss, chlorite-slate, euphotide, serpentine, 
 and a peculiar kind of conglomerate, all of them mineral 
 compounds, foreign alike to the great strath between the 
 Alps and Jura, and to the structure of the Jura itself. In 
 these two regions, limestones, sandstones, and clays of the 
 secondary and tertiary formations alone crop out at the surface, 
 so that the travelled fragments of Alpine origin can easily 
 be distinguished, and in some cases the precise localities 
 pointed out from whence they must have come. 
 
 The accompanying map or diagram, slightly altered from 
 one given by Mr. Maclaren, will enable the reader more 
 fully to appreciate the line of argument relied on by M. 
 Gruyot. The dotted area is that over which the Alpine 
 fragments were spread by the supposed extinct glacier of the 
 Khone. The site of the present reduced glacier of that name 
 is shown at A. From that point, the boulders may first be 
 traced to B, or Martigny, where the valley takes an abrupt 
 turn at right angles to its former course. Here the blocks 
 belonging to the right side of the river, or derived from c, d, e, 
 have not crossed over to the left side at B, as they should 
 
 * Edinburgh. New Philosophical Magazine, October 1852. 
 
CHAP. xv. MAP OF EXTINCT GLACIER OF THE RHONE. 
 
 299 
 
 have done had they been transported by floating ice, but 
 continue to keep to the side to which they belonged, assum- 
 
 Fig. 42 
 
 MAP SHOWING THE SUPPOSED COURSE OF THE ANCIENT AND NOW EX 
 TINCT GLACIER OF THE RHONE, AND THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE 
 ERRATIC BLOCKS AND DRIFT CONVEYED BY IT TO THE GREAT VALLEY 
 OF SWITZERLAND AND THE JURA. 
 
 ing that they once formed part of a right lateral moraine of 
 a great extinct glacier. That glacier, after arriving at the 
 lower end of the long narrow valley of the upper Khone at F, 
 filled the lake of Geneva, F, I, with ice. From F, as from a 
 great vomitory, it then radiated in all directions, bearing 
 along with it the moraines with which it was loaded, and 
 spreading them out on all sides over the great plain. But 
 
300 DIRECTION TAKEN BY THE ERRATICS, CHAP. xv. 
 
 the principal icy mass moved straight onwards in a direct line 
 towards the hill of Chasseron, G (precisely opposite F), where 
 the Alpine erratics attain their maximum of height on the 
 Jura, that is to say, 2,015 English feet above the level of the 
 Lake of Neufchatel, or 3,450 feet above the sea. The granite 
 blocks which have ascended to this eminence G, came from 
 the east shoulder of Mont Blanc, A, having travelled in the 
 direction B, F, G. 
 
 When these and the accompanying blocks resting on the 
 south-eastern declivity of the Jura are traced from their 
 culminating point a, in opposite directions, whether westward 
 towards Geneva, or eastwards towards Soleure, they are found 
 to decline in height from the middle of the arc G, towards 
 the two extremities I an<J K, both of which are at a lower 
 level than G, by about 1,500 feet. In other words, the 
 ice of the extinct glacier, having mounted up on the sloping 
 flanks of the Jura in the line of greatest pressure to its highest 
 elevation, began to decline laterally in the manner of a pliant 
 or viscous mass, with a gentle inclination, till it reached two 
 points distant from each other no less than 100 miles. 
 
 In further confirmation of this theory, M. Gruyot observed 
 that fragments derived from the right bank of the great valley 
 of the Rhone, c, d, e, are found on the right side of the great 
 Swiss basin or strath, as at I and m, while those derived from 
 the left bank, p, h, occur on the left side of the basin, or on 
 the Jura, between G and i; and those again derived from 
 places farthest up on the left bank and nearest the source of 
 the Rhone, as n o, occupy the middle of the great basin, con 
 stituting, between m and K, what M. Gruyot calls the frontal 
 or terminal moraine of the eastern prolongation of the old 
 glacier. 
 
 A huge boulder of talcose granite, now at Steinhoff, ten 
 miles east fromK, or Soleure, containing 61,000 cubic French 
 feet, or equal in bulk to a mass measuring 40 feet in every 
 
CHAP. xv. NOT DUE TO FLOATING ICE. 01 
 
 direction, was ascertained by Charpentier, from its com 
 position, to have been derived from n, one of the highest 
 points on the left side of the Rhone valley, far above 
 Martigny. From this spot it must have gone all round 
 by F, which is the only outlet to the deep valley, so as to 
 have performed a journey of no less than 150 miles ! 
 
 General Transportation of Erratics in Switzerland due to 
 Glaciers and not to floating Ice. 
 
 It is evident that the above described restriction of certain 
 fragments of peculiar lithological character to that bank of 
 the Rhone where the parent rocks are alone met with, and 
 the linear arrangement of the blocks in corresponding order 
 on the opposite side of the great plain of Switzerland, are 
 facts, which harmonise singularly well with the theory of 
 glaciers, while they are wholly irreconcilable with that of 
 floating ice. Against the latter hypothesis, all the arguments 
 which Charpentier originally brought forward in opposition 
 to the first popular doctrine of a grand debacle, or sudden 
 flood, rushing down from the Alps to the Jura, might be 
 revived. Had there ever been such a rush of muddy water, 
 said he, the blocks carried down the basins of the principal 
 Swiss rivers, such as the Rhone, Aar, Reuss, and Limmat, 
 would all have been mingled confusedly together instead of 
 having each remained in separate and distinct areas as they 
 do and should do according to the glacial hypothesis. 
 
 M. Morlot presented me in 1857 with an unpublished map 
 of Switzerland in which he had embodied the results of 
 his own observations, and those of MM. Gruyot, Escher, 
 and others, marking out by distinct colours the limits of the 
 ice-transported detritus proper to each of the great river- 
 basins. The arrangement of the drift and erratics thus 
 depicted accords perfectly well with Charpentier's views, and 
 
302 TRANSPORTATION OF ALPINE ERRATICS, CHAP. xv. 
 
 is quite irreconcilable with the supposition of the scattered 
 blocks having been dispersed by floating ice when Switzerland 
 was submerged. 
 
 As opposed to the latter hypothesis, I may also state that 
 nowhere as yet have any marine shells or other fossils than 
 those of a terrestrial character, such as the bones of the 
 mammoth, and a few other mammalia, and some coniferous 
 wood, been detected in those drifts, though they are often 
 many hundreds of feet in thickness. 
 
 A glance at M. Morlot's map, above alluded to,* will show 
 that the two largest areas, indicated by a single colour, are 
 those over which the Ehone and the Ehine are supposed 
 to have spread out in ancient times their enormous moraines. 
 One of these only, that of the Ehone, has been exhibited 
 in our diagram, fig. 42, p. 299. The distinct character 
 of the drift in the two cases is such as it would be if 
 two colossal glaciers should now come down from the higher 
 Alps through the valleys traversed by those rivers, leaving 
 their moraines in the low country. The space occupied 
 by the glacial drift of the Ehine is equal in dimensions, 
 or rather exceeds, that of the Ehone, and its course is not 
 interfered with in the least degree by the Lake of Constance, 
 forty-five miles long, any more than is the dispersion of the 
 erratics of the Ehone, by the Lake of Geneva, about fifty 
 miles in length. The angular and other blocks have in both 
 instances travelled on precisely as if those lakes had no 
 existence, or as if, which was no doubt the case, they had 
 been filled with solid ice. 
 
 During my last visit to Switzerland in 1857, I made ex 
 cursions, in company with several distinguished geologists, for 
 the sake of testing the relative merits of the two rival theo 
 ries above referred to, and examined parts of the Jura above 
 
 * See map, Geological Quarterly Journal, vol. xviii. pi. 18, p. 185. 
 
CHAP. xv. DUE TO TERRESTRIAL GLACIERS. 303 
 
 Neufchatel in company with M. Desor, the country round 
 Soleure with Mr. Langen, the southern side of the great 
 strath near Lausanne with M. Morlot, the basin of the Aar, 
 around Berne, with M. Escher von der Linth ; and having 
 satisfied myself that all the facts which I saw north of the 
 Alps were in accordance with M. Guyot's views, I crossed to 
 the Italian side of the great chain, and became convinced 
 'that the same theory was equally applicable to the ancient 
 moraines of the plains of the Po. 
 
 M. Escher pointed out to me at Trogen in Appenzel, on 
 the left bank of the Ehine, fragments of a rock of a peculiar 
 mineralogical character, commonly called the granite of Pon- 
 telyas, the natural position of which is well known near 
 Trons, a hundred miles from Trogen, on the left bank of the 
 Ehine, about thirty miles from the source of that river. All 
 the blocks of this peculiar granite keep to the left bank, even 
 where the valley turns almost at right angles to its former 
 course near Mayenfeld below Chur, making a sharp bend, 
 resembling that of the valley of the Ehone at Martigny. 
 The granite blocks, where they are traced to the low country, 
 still keep to the left side of the Lake of Constance. That 
 they should not have crossed over to the opposite river- 
 bank below Chur is quite inexplicable, if, rejecting the aid 
 of land-ice, we appeal to floating ice as the transporting 
 power. 
 
 In M. Morlot's map, already cited, we behold between the 
 areas occupied by the glacial drift of the Ehine and Ehone 
 three smaller yet not inconsiderable spaces, distinguished by 
 distinct colours, indicating the peculiar detritus brought down 
 by the three great rivers, the Aar, Eeuss, and Limmat. The 
 ancient glacier of the first of these, the Aar, has traversed the 
 lakes of Brienz and Thun, and has borne angular, polished 
 and striated blocks of limestone and other rocks as far as 
 Berne, and somewhat below that city. The Eeuss has also 
 
304 ANCIENT AND MODERN GLACIERS CONTRASTED. CHAP. xv. 
 
 stamped the lithological character of its own mountainous 
 region upon the lower part of its hydrographical basin by 
 covering it with its peculiar Alpine drift. In like manner the 
 old extinct glacier of the Limmat, during its gradual retreat, 
 has left monuments of its course in the Lake of Zurich in the 
 shape of terminal moraines, one of which has almost divided 
 that great sheet of water into two lakes. 
 
 The ice-work done by the extinct glaciers, as contrasted 
 with that performed by their dwarfed representatives of the 
 present day, is in due proportion to the relative volume of the 
 supposed glaciers, whether we measure them by the distances 
 to which they have carried erratic blocks, or the areas which 
 they have strewed over with drift, or the hard surfaces of rock 
 and number of boulders which they have polished and 
 striated. Instead of a length of five, ten, or twenty miles 
 and a thickness of 200, 300, or at the utmost 800 feet, those 
 giants of the olden time must have been from 50 to 150 miles 
 long, and between 1,000 and 3,000 feet deep. In like manner 
 the glaciation, although identical in kind, is on so small a 
 scale in the existing Alpine glaciers as at first sight to dis 
 appoint a Swedish, Scotch, Welsh or North American geolo-; 
 gist. When I visited the terminal moraine of the glacier of 
 the Khone in 1859, and tried to estimate the number of 
 angular or rounded pebbles and blocks which exhibited glacial 
 polishing or scratches as compared to those bearing no such 
 markings, I found that several thousand had to be reckoned 
 before I arrived at the first which was so striated or polished 
 as to differ from the stones of an ordinary torrent-bed. Even 
 in the moraines of the glaciers of Zermatt, Viesch, and others, 
 in which fragments of limestone and serpentine are abundant 
 (rocks which most readily receive and most faithfully retain 
 the signs of glaciation), I found, for one which displayed such 
 indications, several hundreds entirely free from them. Of 
 the most opposite character were the results obtained by me 
 
CHAP. xv. EXTINCT GLACIERS OF ITALIAN ALPS. 305 
 
 from a similar scrutiny of the boulders and pebbles of the ter 
 minal moraine of one of the old extinct glaciers, namely, that 
 of the Eh one in the suburbs of Soleure. Thus at the point 
 K, in the map, fig. 42, p. 299, 1 observed a mass of unstratified 
 clay or mud, through which a variety of angular and rubbed 
 stones were scattered, and a marked proportion of the whole 
 were polished and scratched, and the clay rendered so com 
 pact, as if by the incumbent pressure of a great mass of ice, 
 that it has been found necessary to blow it up with gun 
 powder in making railway cuttings through part of it. A 
 marble rock of the age of our Portland stone, on which this 
 old moraine rests, has its surface polished like a looking-glass, 
 displaying beautiful sections of fossil shells of the genera 
 Nerinsea and Pteroceras, w r hile occasionally, besides finer 
 striae, there are deep rectilinear grooves, agreeing in direction 
 with the course in which the extinct glacier would have 
 moved according to the theory of M. Ghiyot, before explained. 
 
 Extinct Glaciers of the Italian Side of the Alps. 
 
 To select another example from the opposite or southern 
 side of the Alps. It will be seen in the elaborate map, re 
 cently executed by Signer Gabriel de Mortillet, of the 
 ancient glaciers of the Italian flank of the Alps, that the old 
 moraines descend in narrow strips from the snow-covered 
 ridges, through the principal valleys, to the great basin of the 
 Po, on reaching which they expand and cover large circular 
 or oval areas. Each of these groups of detritus is observed 
 (see map, p. 306) to contain exclusively the wreck of such 
 rocks as occur in situ on the Alpine heights of the hydro- 
 graphical basins to which the moraines respectively belong. 
 
 I had an opportunity of verifying this fact, in company with 
 Signer Gastaldi as my guide, by examining the erratics and 
 boulder formation between Susa and Turin, on the banks of 
 
 x 
 
306 
 
 MORAINES OF EXTINCT GLACIERS 
 
 the Dora Riparia, which brings down the waters from Mont 
 Cenis, and from the Alps SW. of it. I there observed stria 
 ted fragments of dolomite and gypsum, which had come 
 
 Fig. 43 
 
 
 MAP OF THE MORAINES OF EXTINCT GLACIERS EXTENDING FEOM THE 
 ALPS INTO THE PLAINS OF THE PO NEAR TURIN. 
 
 From Map of the ancient Glaciers of the Italian side of the Alps by 
 Signor Gabriel de Mortillet. 
 
 A Crest or watershed of the Alps. 
 
 B Snow-covered Alpine summits which fed the ancient glaciers. 
 
 c Moraines of ancient or extinct glaciers. 
 
CHAP. XV. IN THE PLAINS OF THE PO. 307 
 
 down from Mont Cenis, and had travelled as far as Avi- 
 gliana ; also masses of serpentine, brought from less remote 
 points, some of them apparently exceeding in dimensions 
 the largest erratics of Switzerland. I afterwards visited, 
 in company with Signori Grastaldi and Michellotti, a still 
 grander display of the work of a colossal glacier of the olden 
 time, twenty miles NE. of Turin, the moraine of which 
 descended from the two highest of the Alps, Mont Blanc 
 and Monte Rosa, and after passing through the valley of 
 Aosta, issued from a narrow defile above Ivrea (see map, 
 fig. 43). From this vomitory, the old glacier poured into 
 the plains of the Po that wonderful accumulation of mud, 
 gravel, boulders, and large erratics, which extend for fifteen 
 miles from above Ivrea to below Caluso, and which, when 
 seen in profile from Turin, have the aspect of a chain of 
 hills. In many countries, indeed, they might rank as an im 
 portant range of hills, for where they join the mountains they 
 are more than 1,500 feet high, and retain more than half that 
 height for a great part of their course, rising very abruptly 
 from the plain, often with a slope of from 20 to 30. This 
 glacial drift reposes near the mountains on ancient meta- 
 morphic rocks, and farther from them on marine pliocene 
 strata. Portions of the ridges of till and stratified matter 
 have been cut up into mounds and hillocks by the action of 
 the river, the Dora Baltea, and there are numerous lakes, so 
 that the entire moraine much resembles, except in its greater 
 height and width, the line of glacial drift of Perthshire and 
 Forfarshire, before described, p. 248. Its complicated struc 
 ture can only be explained by supposing that the ancient 
 glacier advanced and retreated several times, and left large 
 lateral moraines, the more modern mounds within the limits 
 of the older ones, and masses of till thrown down upon the 
 re-arranged and stratified materials of the first set of moraines. 
 Such appearances accord well with the hypothesis of the 
 
 x 2 
 
308 CONTORTED DRIFT OF IVREA. CHAP. xv. 
 
 successive phases of glacial action in Switzerland, to which I 
 shall presently advert. 
 
 Contorted Strata of Glacial Drift south of Ivrea. 
 
 At Mazze near Caluso (see map, p. 306), the southern 
 extremity of this great moraine has recently been cut 
 through in making a tunnel for the railway which runs from 
 Turin to Ivrea. In the fine section thus exposed Signor 
 Grastaldi and I had an opportunity of observing the internal 
 structure of the glacial formation. In close juxtaposition to 
 a great mass of till with striated boulders, we saw stratified 
 beds of alternating gravel, sand, and loam, which were so 
 sharply bent that many of them had been twice pierced 
 through in the same vertical cutting. Whether they had 
 been thus folded by the mechanical power of an advancing 
 glacier, which had pushed before it a heap of stratified matter, 
 as the glacier of Zermatt has been sometimes known to shove 
 forward blocks of stone through the walls of houses, or 
 whether the melting of masses of ice, once interstratified with 
 sand and gravel, had given rise to flexures, in the manner 
 before suggested, pp. 138 and 220 ; it is at least satisfactory 
 to have detected this new proof of a close connection between 
 ice-action and contorted stratification, such as has been 
 described as so common in the Norfolk cliffs, p. 222, and 
 which is also very often seen in Scotland and North America, 
 where stratified gravel overlies till. I have little doubt that 
 if the marine pliocene strata, which underlie a great part of the 
 moraine below Ivrea, were exposed to view in a vertical section, 
 those fundamental strata would be found not to participate in 
 the least degree in the plications of the sands and gravels 
 of the overlying glacial drift. 
 
 To return to the marks of glaciation : in the moraine at 
 Mazze, there are many large blocks of protogene, and large 
 
CHAP. XV. THEOKT OF THE ORIGIN OF LAKE- BASINS. 309 
 
 and small ones of limestone and serpentine, which have been 
 brought down from Monte Kosa, through the gorge of Ivrea^ 
 after having travelled for a distance of 100 miles. Confining 
 my attention to a part of the moraine, where pieces of lime 
 stone and serpentine were very numerous, I found that no less 
 than one-third of the whole number bore unequivocal signs 
 of glacial action ; a state of things which seems to bear some 
 relation to the vast volume and pressure of the ice which 
 once constituted the extinct glacier, and to the distance which 
 the stones had travelled. When I separated the pebbles of 
 quartz, which were never striated, and those of granite, mica 
 schist, and diorite, which do not often exhibit glacial mark 
 ings, and confined my attention to the serpentine alone, I 
 found no less than nineteen in twenty of the whole number 
 polished and scratched ; whereas in the terminal moraines of 
 some modern glaciers, where the materials have travelled not 
 more than ten or fifteen, instead of a hundred miles, scarce 
 one in twenty even of the serpentine pebbles exhibit glacial 
 polish and striation. 
 
 Theory of the Origin of Lake-basins by the erosive Action of 
 Glaciers, considered. 
 
 Geologists are all agreed, that the last series of movements 
 to which the Alps owe their present form and internal struc 
 ture, occurred after the deposition of the miocene strata ; and 
 it has been usual to refer the origin of the numerous lake- 
 basins of Alpine and sub-Alpine regions, both in Switzerland 
 and Northern Italy, to the same movements ; for it seemed 
 not unnatural to suppose, that forces capable of modifying 
 the configuration of the greatest European chain, by up 
 lifting some of its component tertiary strata (those of marine 
 origin of the miocene period) several thousand feet above 
 their former level, after throwing them into vertical and 
 
310 THEORY OF THE ORIGIN OF LAKE-BASINS CHAP. xv. 
 
 contorted positions, must also have given rise to many super 
 ficial inequalities, in some of which large bodies of water 
 would collect. M. Desor, in a memoir on the Swiss and 
 Italian lakes, suggested that they may have escaped being 
 obliterated by sedimentary deposition, by having been filled 
 with ice during the whole of the glacial period. 
 
 Subsequently to the retreat of the great glaciers, we know 
 that the lake-basins have been to a certain extent encroached 
 upon and turned into land by river deltas ; one of which, that 
 of the Rhone at the head of the lake of Geneva, is no less 
 than twelve miles long and several miles broad, besides 
 which there are many torrents on the borders of the same 
 lake, forming smaller deltas. 
 
 M. Gabriel de Mortillet, after a careful study of the glacial 
 formations of the Alps, agreed with his predecessors, that the 
 great lakes had existed before the glacial period, but came to 
 the opinion, in 1859, that they had all been first filled up 
 with alluvial matter, and then re-excavated by the action of 
 ice, which, during the epoch of intense cold, had by its 
 weight and force of propulsion, scooped out the loose and 
 incoherent alluvial strata, even where they had accumulated 
 to a thickness of 2,000 feet. Besides this erosion, the ice had 
 carried the whole mass of mud and stones up the inclined 
 planes, from the central depths to the lower outlets of the 
 lakes, and sometimes far beyond them. As some of these 
 rock-basins are 500, others more than 2,000 feet deep, having 
 their bottoms in some cases 500, in others 1,000 feet below 
 the level of the sea, and having areas from twenty to fifty 
 miles in length and from four to twelve in breadth, we may 
 well be startled at the boldness of this hypothesis. 
 
 The following are the facts and train of reasoning which 
 induced M. de Mortillet to embrace these views. At the 
 lower ends of the great Italian lakes, such as Maggiore, Como, 
 Garda and others, there are vast moraines which are proved 
 
CHAP. XV. BY THE EROSIVE ACTION OF GLACIERS. 311 
 
 by their contents to have come from the upper Alpine 
 valleys above the lakes. Such moraines often repose on an 
 older stratified alluvium, made up of rounded and worn 
 pebbles of precisely the same rocks as those forming the 
 moraines, but not derived from them, being small in size, 
 never angular, polished, or striated, and the whole having 
 evidently come from a great distance. These older alluvial 
 strata must, according to M. de Mortillet, be of pre-glacial 
 date, and could not have been carried past the sites of the 
 lakes, unless each basin had previously been filled and 
 levelled up with mud, sand, and gravel, so that the river 
 channel was continuous from the upper to the lower extremity 
 of each basin. 
 
 Professor Eamsay, after acquiring an intimate knowledge 
 of the glacial phenomena of the British Isles, had taught, 
 many years before, that small tarns and shallow rock-basins, 
 such as we see in many mountain regions, owe their origin 
 to glaciers which erode the softer rocks, leaving the harder 
 ones standing out in relief and comparatively unabraded. 
 Following up this idea after he had visited Switzerland, and 
 without any communication with M. de Mortillet or cog 
 nizance of his views, he suggested in 1859 that the lake- 
 basins were not of pre-glacial date, but had been scooped out 
 by ice during the glacial period, the excavation having for 
 the most part been effected in miocene sandstone, provincially 
 called, on account of its softness, 4 molasse.' By this theory 
 he dispensed with the necessity of filling up pre-existing 
 cavities with stratified alluvium, in the manner proposed by 
 M. de Mortillet. 
 
 I will now explain to what extent I agree with, and on what 
 points I feel compelled to differ from, the two distinguished 
 geologists above cited. 1st. It is no doubt true, as Professor 
 Eamsay remarks, that heavy masses of ice, creeping for ages 
 over a surface of dry land (whether this comprise hills, 
 
312 THEORY OF THE ORIGIN OF LAKE-BASINS CHAP. xv. 
 
 plateaus and valleys, as in the case of Greenland, before 
 described (p. 235), or be confined to the bottoms of great 
 valleys, as now in the higher Alps), must often, by their grind 
 ing action, produce depressions, in consequence of the different 
 degrees of resistance offered by rocks of unequal hardness. 
 Thus, for example, where quartzose beds of mica schist alternate 
 with clay-slate, or where trap-dykes, often causing waterfalls in 
 the courses of torrents, cut through sandstone or slate these 
 and innumerable other common associations of dissimilar 
 stony compounds, must give rise to a very unequal amount 
 of erosion, and consequently to lake-basins on a small scale. 
 But the larger the size of any lake, the more certain it will 
 be to contain within it rocks of every degree of hardness, 
 toughness, and softness ; and if we find a gradual deepening 
 from the head towards the central parts, and a shallowing 
 again from the middle to the lower end, as in several of the 
 great Swiss and Italian lakes, which are thirty or forty miles 
 in length, we require a power capable of acting with a con 
 siderable degree of uniformity on these masses of varying 
 powers of resistance. 
 
 2ndly. Several of the great lakes are by no means in the 
 line of direction which they ought to have taken had they 
 been scooped out by the pressure and onward movement of 
 the extinct glaciers. The Lake of Geneva, for instance, had 
 it been the work of ice, would have been prolonged from the 
 termination of the upper valley of the Ehone towards the 
 Jura, in the direction from F to a of the map, fig. 42, 
 p. 299, instead of running from F to I. 
 
 Srdly. It has been ascertained experimentally, that in a 
 glacier, as in a river, the rate of motion is accelerated or 
 lessened, according to the greater or less slope of the ground ; 
 also, that the lower strata of ice, like those of water, move 
 more slowly than those above them. In the Lago Maggiore, 
 which is more than 2,600 feet deep (797 metres), the ice, 
 
CHAP. xv. BY THE EROSIVE ACTION OF GLACIEES. 313 
 
 says Professor Kamsay, had to descend a slope of about 3 
 for the first twenty-five miles, and then to ascend for the 
 last twelve miles (from the deepest part towards the outlet), 
 at an angle of 5. It is for those who are conversant with 
 the dynamics of glacier motion to divine whether, in such a 
 case, the discharge of ice would not be entirely effected by 
 the superior and faster moving strata, and whether the 
 lowest would not be motionless or nearly so, and would 
 therefore exert very little, if any, friction on the bottom. 
 
 4thly. But the gravest objection to the hypothesis of 
 glacial erosion on so stupendous a scale is afforded by the 
 entire absence of lakes of the first magnitude in several areas 
 where they ought to exist if the enormous glaciers which 
 once occupied those spaces had possessed the deep excavating 
 power ascribed to them. Thus in the area laid down on 
 the map, p. 306, or that covered by the ancient moraine 
 of the Dora Baltea, we see the monuments of a colossal 
 glacier derived from Mont Blanc and Monte Rosa, which 
 descended from points nearly a hundred miles distant, and 
 then emerging from the narrow gorge above Ivrea, deployed 
 upon the plains of the Po, advancing over a floor of marine 
 pliocene strata of no greater solidity than the miocene sand 
 stone and conglomerate in which the lake-basins of Geneva, 
 Zurich, and some others are situated. Why did this 
 glacier fail to scoop out a deep and wide basin rivalling in 
 size the lakes of Maggiore or Como, instead of merely giving 
 rise to a few ponds above Ivrea, which may have been due to 
 ice action? There is one lake, it is true that of Candia, 
 near the southern extremity of the moraine, which is larger ; 
 but even this, as will be seen by the map, p. 306, is quite of 
 subordinate importance, and whether it is situated in a rock 
 basin or is simply caused by a dam of moraine matter, has 
 not yet been fully made out. 
 
 There ought also to have been another great lake, 
 
314 THEORY OF THE ORIGIN OF LAKE-BASINS CHAP. xv. 
 
 according to the theory under consideration, in the space 
 now occupied by the moraine of the Dora Riparia, between 
 Susa and Turin (see map, p. 306). Signor Gastaldi has 
 shown that all the ponds in that area consist exclusively of 
 what M. de Mortillet has denominated morainic lakes, 
 i. e. caused by barriers of glacier-mud and stones. 
 
 5thly. In proof of the great lakes having had no existence 
 before the glacial period, Professor Eamsay observes that 
 we do not find in the Alps any freshwater strata of an age 
 intermediate between 'the close of the miocenic and the 
 commencement of the glacial epoch.'* But although such 
 formations are scarce, they are by no means wholly wanting ; 
 and if it can be shown that any one of the principal lakes^ 
 that of Zurich for example, existed prior to the glacial era, it 
 will follow that in the Alps the erosive power of ice was not 
 required to produce lake-basins on a large scale. The deposits 
 alluded to on the borders of the lake of Zurich are those of 
 Utznach and Diirnten, situated each about 350 feet above 
 the present level of the lake, and containing valuable beds of 
 lignite. 
 
 The first of them, that of Utznach, is a delta formed at the 
 head of the ancient and once more extensive lake. The argil 
 laceous and lignite-bearing strata, more than 100 feet in 
 thickness, rest unconformably on highly inclined and sometimes 
 vertical miocene molasse. These clays are covered conform 
 ably by stratified sand and gravel sixty feet thick, partly con 
 solidated, in which the pebbles are of rocks belonging to the 
 upper valleys of the Limmat and its tributaries, all of them 
 small and not glacially striated, and wholly without admixture 
 of large angular stones. On the top of all repose very 
 large erratic blocks, affording clear evidence that the colossal 
 glacier which once filled the valley of the Limmat covered 
 
 * G-eol. Quart. Journ. vol. xviii. 
 
CHAP. XV. BY THE EROSIVE ACTION OF GLACIERS. 315 
 
 the old littoral deposit. The great age of the lignite is partly 
 indicated by the bones of Elephas antiquus found in it. 
 
 I visited Utznach in company with M. Escher von der 
 Linth in 1857, and during the same year examined the lignite 
 of Diirnten, many miles further down on the right bank of 
 the lake, in company with Professor Heer and Mr. Marcou. 
 The beds there are of the same age and within a few feet of 
 the same height above the level of the lake. They might easily 
 have been overlooked or confounded with the general glacial 
 drift of the neighbourhood, had not the bed of lignite, which 
 is from five to twelve feet thick, been worked for fuel, dur 
 ing which operation many organic remains came to light. 
 Among these are the teeth of Elephas antiquus, determined 
 by Dr. Falconer, and Rhinoceros leptorhinus? (R. megarhinus 
 Christol), the wild bull and red deer (Bos primigenius Boj., 
 and Cervus Elaphus L.), the last two determined by Professor 
 Eiitemeyer. In the same beds I found many freshwater 
 shells of the genera Paludina y Limnea, &c., all of living 
 species. The plants named by Professor Heer are also 
 recent, and agree singularly with those of the Cromer buried 
 forest, before described (p. 214). 
 
 Among them are the Scotch and spruce firs, Pinus syl- 
 vestris and Pinus Abies, and the buckbean, or Menyanthes 
 trifoliata, &c., besides the common birch and other Eu 
 ropean plants. 
 
 Overlying this lignite are, first, as at Utznach, stratified 
 gravel, not of glacial origin, about thirty feet thick ; and, 
 secondly, highest of all, huge angular erratic blocks, clearly 
 indicating the presence of a great glacier, posterior in date 
 to all the organic remains above enumerated. 
 
 If any one of the existing Swiss lakes were now lowered by 
 deepening its outlet, or by raising the higher portion of it 
 relatively to the lower, we should see similar deltas of com 
 paratively modern date exposed to view, some of them with 
 
316 THEORY OF THE ORIGIN OF LAKE-BASINS CHAP. xv. 
 
 embedded trunks of pines of the same species drifted down 
 during freshets. Such deposits would be most frequent at 
 the upper ends of the lakes, but a few would occur on either 
 bank not far from the shore, where torrents once entered, 
 agreeing in geographical position with the lignite formations 
 of Utznach and Diirnten. 
 
 There are other freshwater formations with lignite, besides 
 those on the lake of Zurich, as those of Wetzikon, near the 
 Pfaffikon Lake, of Kaltbrunnen, of Buchberg, and that of 
 Morschweil between St. Grail and Rorschach, but none pro 
 bably older than the Diirnten beds. Like the buried forest 
 of Cromer (p. 214), they are all pre-glacial, yet they by 
 no means represent the older nor even the newer pliocene 
 period, but rather the beginning of the post-pliocene. It is 
 therefore true, as Professor Ramsay remarks, that, as yet, no 
 strata c of the age of the English Crag' have been detected in 
 any Alpine valley. In other words, there are no freshwater 
 formations yet known corresponding in date to the pliocene 
 beds of the upper Val d'Arno, above Florence a fact from 
 which we may infer (though with diffidence, as the inference 
 is based on negative evidence), that, although the great 
 Alpine valleys were eroded in pliocene times, the lake-basins 
 were, nevertheless, of post-pliocene date some of them 
 formed before, others during, the glacial epoch. 
 
 6th] y. In what manner, then, did the great lake basins ori 
 ginate if they were not hollowed out by ice ? My answer is, 
 they are all due to unequal movements of upheaval and sub 
 sidence. We have already seen that the buried forest of 
 Cromer, which, by its organic contents, seems clearly to be 
 of the same age as the lignite of Diirnten, was pre-glacial, 
 and that it has undergone a great oscillation of level (about 
 500 feet in both directions, see p. 227) since its origin, 
 having first sunk to that extent below the sea, and then 
 been raised up again to the sea-level. In the countless post- 
 
CHAP. xv. BY THE EROSIVE ACTION OF GLACIERS. .317 
 
 miocene ages which preceded the glacial period there was 
 ample time for the slow erosion by water of all the principal 
 hydrographical basins of the Alps, and the sites of all the 
 great lakes coincide, as Professor Eamsay truly says, with 
 these great lines of drainage. The lake-cavities do not lie in 
 synclinal troughs, following the strike and foldings of the 
 strata, but often, as the same geologist remarks, cross them 
 at high angles ; nor are they due to rents or gaping fissures, 
 although these, with other accidents connected with the 
 disturbing movements of the Alps, may sometimes have 
 determined originally the direction of the valleys. The 
 conformity of the lake-basins to the principal watercourses is 
 explicable if we assume them to have resulted from inequali 
 ties in the upward and downward movements of the whole 
 country in post-pliocene times, after the valleys were eroded. 
 We know that in Sweden the rate of the rise of the land 
 is far from uniform, being only a few inches in a century 
 near Stockholm, while north of it, and beyond Grefle, it 
 amounts to as many feet in the same number of years. Let 
 us suppose, with Charpentier, that the Alps gained in height 
 several thousand feet at the time when the intense cold of 
 the glacial period was coming on. This gradual rise would 
 be an era of aqueous erosion, and of the deepening, widening, 
 and lengthening of the valleys. It is very improbable that 
 the elevation would be everywhere identical in quantity, but 
 if it was never in excess in the outskirts as compared to the 
 central region or crest of the chain, it would not give rise to 
 lakes. When, however, the period of upheaval was followed 
 by one of gradual subsidence, the movement not being every 
 where strictly uniform, lake-basins would be formed where- 
 ever the rate of depression was in excess in the upper country. 
 Let the region, for example, near the head waters of the great 
 rivers sink at the rate of from four to six feet per century, 
 while only half as much subsidence occurs towards the cir- 
 
313 THEORY OF THE ORIGIN OF LAKE-BASINS CHAP. xv. 
 
 cumference of the mountains the rate diminishing about an 
 inch per mile, in a distance, say of forty miles this might 
 convert many of the largest and deepest valleys at their 
 lower ends into lakes. 
 
 We have no certainty that such movements may not now 
 be in progress in the Alps ; for if they are as slow as we have 
 assumed, they would be as insensible to the inhabitants, as 
 is the upheaval of Scandinavia or the subsidence of Green 
 land to the Swedes and Danes who dwell there. They only 
 know of the progress of such geographical revolutions, because 
 a slight change of level becomes manifest on the margin of 
 the sea. The lines of elevation or depression above supposed 
 might leave no clear geological traces of their action on the 
 high ridges and table-lands separating the valleys of the 
 principal rivers ; it is only when they cross such valleys, that 
 the disturbance caused in the course of thousands of years in 
 the drainage becomes apparent. If there were no ice, the 
 sinking of the land might not give rise to lakes. To accom 
 plish this in the absence of ice, it is necessary that the rate 
 of depression should be sufficiently fast to make it impossible 
 for the depositing power of the river to keep pace with it, or, 
 in other words, to fill up the incipient cavity, as fast as it 
 begins to form. Such levelling operations once complete, 
 the running water, aided by sand and pebbles, will gradually 
 cut a gorge through the newly raised rock, so as to prevent 
 it from forming a barrier. But if a great glacier fill the 
 lower part of the valley, aM the conditions of the problem 
 are altered. Instead of the mud, sand, and stones drifted 
 down from the higher regions being left behind in the 
 incipient basin, they all travel onwards in the shape of 
 moraines on the top of the ice, passing over and beyond the 
 new depression, so that when, at the end of fifty or a thousand 
 centuries, the glacier melts, a large and deep basin repre 
 senting the difference in the movement of two adjoining 
 
CHAP. xv. BY THE EROSIVE ACTION OF GLACIERS. 319 
 
 mountain areas namely, the central and the circumferential 
 is for the first time rendered visible. 
 
 By adopting this hypothesis, we concede that there is an 
 intimate connection between the glacial period and a pre 
 dominance of lakes, in producing which the action of ice is 
 threefold ; first, by its direct power in scooping out shallow 
 basins where the rocks are of unequal hardness; an opera 
 tion which can by no means be confined to the land, for it 
 must extend to below the level of high water a thousand feet 
 and more, in such friths as have been described as filled with 
 ice in Greenland (see above, p. 236J. 
 
 2ndly. The ice will act indirectly by preventing cavities 
 caused by inequalities of subsidence or elevation from be 
 coming the receptacles first of water, and then of sediment, 
 by which the cavities would be levelled up and the lakes 
 obliterated. 
 
 Srdly. The ice is also an indirect cause of lakes, by heaping 
 up mounds of moraine matter, and thus giving rise to ponds 
 and even to sheets of water several miles in diameter. 
 
 The comparative scarcity, therefore, of lakes of post-pliocene 
 date in tropical countries, and very generally south of the 
 fortieth and fiftieth parallels of latitude, may be accounted for 
 by the absence of glacial action in such regions. 
 
 Post-glacial Lake-dwelling in the North of Italy. 
 
 We learn from M. de Mortillet that in the peat which has 
 filled up one of the ( morainic lakes ' formed by the ancient 
 glacier of the Ticino, M. Moro has discovered at Mercurago 
 the piles of a lake-dwelling like those of Switzerland, together 
 with various utensils, and a canoe hollowed out of the trunk 
 of a tree. From this fact we learn that south of the Alps, as 
 well as north of them, a primitive people having similar 
 habits flourished after the retreat of the great glaciers. 
 
320 PHASES OF ALPINE GLACIAL ACTION. 
 
 Successive Phases of Glacial Action in the Alps, and their 
 Relation to the Human Period. 
 
 According to the geological observations of M. Morlot, the 
 following successive phases in the development of ice-action 
 in the Alps are plainly recognisable : - 
 
 1st. There was a period when the ice was in its greatest 
 excess, as described at p. 300 et seq., when the glacier of the 
 Rhone not only reached the Jura, but climbed to the height of 
 2,015 feet above the lake of Neufchatel, and 3,450 above the 
 sea, at which time the Alpine ice actually entered the French 
 territory at some points, penetrating by certain gorges, as 
 through the defile of the Fort de 1'Ecluse, among others. 
 
 2nd. To this succeeded a prolonged retreat of the great 
 glaciers, when they evacuated not only the Jura and the low 
 country between that chain and the Alps, but retired some 
 way back into the Alpine valleys. M. Morlot supposes their 
 diminution in volume to have accompanied a general sub 
 sidence of the country, to the extent of at least 1,000 feet. 
 The geological formations of the 2nd period consist of 
 stratified masses of sand and gravel, called the ' ancient 
 alluvium ' by MM. Necker and Favre, corresponding to the 
 ( older or lower diluvium ' of some writers. Their origin is 
 evidently due to the action of rivers, swollen by the melting 
 of ice, by which the materials of parts of the old moraines 
 were rearranged and stratified, and left usually at considerable 
 heights above the level of the present valley plains. 
 
 3rd. The glaciers again advanced and became of gigantic 
 dimensions, though they fell far short of those of the first 
 period. That of the Rhone, for example, did not again reach 
 the Jura, though it filled the lake of Geneva, and formed 
 enormous moraines on its borders, and in many parts of the 
 valley between the Alps and Jura. 
 
CHAP. xv. PHASES OF ALPINE GLACIAL ACTION. 321 
 
 4th. A second retreat of the glaciers took place when they 
 gradually shrank nearly into their present limits, accom 
 panied by another accumulation of stratified gravels, which 
 form in many places a series of terraces above the level of the 
 alluvial plains of the existing rivers. 
 
 In the gorge of the Dranse, near Thonon, M. Morlot dis 
 covered no less than three of these glacial formations in direct 
 superposition, namely, at the bottom of the section, a mass of 
 compact till or boulder-clay (No. 1) twelve feet thick, including 
 striated boulders of Alpine limestone, and covered by regularly 
 stratified ancient alluvium (No. 2) 150 feet thick, made up of 
 rounded pebbles in horizontal beds. This mass is in its turn 
 overlaid by a second formation (No. 3) of unstratified boulder 
 clay, with erratic blocks and striated pebbles, which consti 
 tuted the left lateral moraine of the great glacier of the 
 Khone, when it advanced for the second time to the lake of 
 Geneva. At a short distance from the above section, terraces 
 (No. 4) composed of stratified alluvium are seen at the heights 
 of 20, 50, 100, and 150 feet above the lake of Geneva, which, 
 by their position, can be shown to be posterior in date to 
 the upper boulder-clay, and therefore belong to the fourth 
 period, or that of the last retreat of the great glaciers. In 
 the deposits of this fourth period, the remains of the 
 mammoth have been discovered, as at Morges, for example, 
 on the lake of Geneva. The conical delta of the Tiniere, 
 mentioned at p. 27 as containing at different depths monu 
 ments of the Eoman as well as of the antecedent bronze and 
 stone ages, is the work of alluvial deposition going on when 
 the terrace of 50 feet was in progress. This modern delta 
 is supposed by M. Morlot to have required 10,000 years for 
 its accumulation. At the height of 150 feet above the lake, 
 following up the course of the same torrent, we came to a 
 more ancient delta, about ten times as large, which is there 
 fore supposed to be the monument of about ten times as 
 
 Y 
 
322 SUCCESSION OF GLACIAL DEPOSITS. CHAP. xv. 
 
 many centuries, or 100,000 years, all referable to the fourth 
 period mentioned in the preceding page, or that which followed 
 the last retreat of the great glaciers.* 
 
 If the lower flattened cone of Tiniere be referred in great 
 part to the age of the oldest lake-dwellings, the higher one 
 might, perhaps, correspond with the post-pliocene period of 
 St. Acheul, or the era when man and the Elephas primige- 
 nius flourished together; but no human remains or works of 
 art have as yet been found in deposits of this age, or in 
 any alluvium containing the bones of extinct mammalia in 
 Switzerland. 
 
 Upon the whole, it is impossible not to be struck with an 
 apparent correspondence in the succession of events of the 
 glacial period of Switzerland, and that of the British Isles 
 before described. The time of the first Alpine glaciers of 
 colossal dimensions, when that chain perhaps was several 
 thousand feet higher than now, may have agreed with the 
 first continental period alluded to at pp. 241 and 282, when 
 Scotland was invested with a universal crust of ice. The re 
 treat of the first Alpine glaciers, caused partly by a lowering 
 of that chain, may have been synchronous with the period of 
 great submergence and floating ice in England. The second 
 advance of the glaciers may have coincided in date with the 
 re-elevation of the Alps, as well as of the Scotch and Welsh 
 mountains; and lastly, the final retreat of the Swiss and 
 Italian glaciers may have taken place when man and the 
 extinct mammalia were colonising the north-west of Europe, 
 and beginning to inhabit areas which had formed the bed of 
 the glacial sea during the era of chief submergence. 
 
 But it must be confessed, that in the present state of our 
 knowledge, these attempts to compare the chronological re 
 lations of the periods of upheaval and subsidence of areas so 
 
 * Morlot, Terrain quaternaire du Vaudoise des Sciences Naturelles, No. 
 Bassin de Leman, Bulletin de Societ6 44. 
 

 CHAP. XV. COLD PEKIOD IN SICILY AND SYRIA. 323 
 
 widely separated as are the mountains of Scandinavia, the 
 British Isles, and the Alps, or the times of the advance and 
 retreat of glaciers in those several regions, and the greater 
 or less intensity of cold, must be looked upon as very con 
 jectural. 
 
 We may presume with more confidence that when the Alps 
 were highest and the Alpine glaciers most developed, filling 
 all the great lakes of northern Italy, and loading the plains 
 of Piedmont and Lombardy with ice, the waters of the Me 
 diterranean were chilled and of a lower average temperature 
 than now. Such a period of refrigeration is required by the 
 conchologist to account for the prevalence of northern shells 
 in the Sicilian seas about the close of the newer pliocene or 
 commencement of the post-pliocene period. For such shells 
 as Cyprina islandica, Natica clausa, and some others, enu 
 merated among the fossils of the latest tertiary formations 
 of Sicily by Philippi and Edward Forbes, point unequivocally 
 to a former more severe climate. Dr. Hooker also, in his 
 late journey to Syria (in the autumn of 1860), found the 
 moraines of extinct glaciers, on which the whole of the ancient 
 cedars of Lebanon grow, to descend 4,000 feet below the 
 summit of that chain. The temperature of Syria is now so 
 much milder, that there is no longer perpetual snow even on 
 the summit of Lebanon, the height of which was ascertained 
 to be 10,200 feet above the Mediterranean.* 
 
 Such monuments of a cold climate in latitudes so far south 
 as Syria and the north of Sicily, between 33 to 38 north, 
 may be confidently referred to an early part of the glacier 
 period, or to times long anterior to those of man and the ex 
 tinct mammalia of Abbeville and Amiens. 
 
 * Hooker, Natural History Keview, No. 5, January 1862, p. 11. 
 
 Y2 
 
324 NATURE AND ORIGIN OF THE LOESS. CHAP. xvi. 
 
 CHAPTEK XVI. 
 
 HUMAN REMAINS IN THE LOESS, AND THEIR PROBABLE AGE. 
 
 NATURE, ORIGIN, AND AGE OF THE LOESS OF THE RHINE AND 
 
 DANUBE IMPALPABLE MUD PRODUCED BY THE GRINDING ACTION OF 
 
 GLACIERS DISPERSION OF THIS MUD AT THE PERIOD OF THE RETREAT 
 OF THE "GREAT ALPINE GLACIERS CONTINUITY OF THE LOESS FROM 
 
 SWITZERLAND TO THE LOW COUNTRIES CHARACTERISTIC ORGANIC 
 
 REMAINS NOT LACUSTRINE ALPINE GRAVEL IN THE VALLEY OF THE 
 
 RHINE COVERED BY LOESS GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF THE 
 
 LOESS AND ITS HEIGHT ABOVE THE SEA FOSSIL MAMMALIA LOESS OF 
 
 THE DANUBE OSCILLATIONS IN THE LEVEL OF THE ALPS AND LOWER 
 COUNTRY REQUIRED TO EXPLAIN THE FORMATION AND DENUDATION 
 
 OF THE LOESS MORE RAPID MOVEMENT OF THE INLAND COUNTRY 
 
 THE SAME DEPRESSION AND UPHEAVAL MIGHT ACCOUNT FOR THE 
 
 ADVANCE AND RETREAT OF THE ALPINE GLACIERS HIMALAYAN MUD 
 
 OP THE PLAINS OF THE GANGES COMPARED TO EUROPEAN LOESS 
 
 HUMAN REMAINS IN LOESS NEAR MAESTRICHT, AND THEIR PROBABLE 
 ANTIQUITY. 
 
 Nature and Origin of the Loess. 
 
 TNTIMATELY connected with the subjects treated of in 
 J- the last chapter, is the nature, origin, and age of cer 
 tain loamy deposits, commonly called loess, which form a 
 marked feature in the superficial deposits of the basins of the 
 Rhine, Danube, and some other large rivers draining the Alps, 
 and which extend down the Rhine into the Low Countries, 
 and were once perhaps continuous with others of like com 
 position in the north of France, 
 
 It has been reported of late years that human remains 
 have been detected at several points in the loess of the 
 Meuse around and below Maestricht. I have visited the 
 localities referred to ; but, before giving an account of 
 them, it will be desirable to explain what is meant by the 
 
CHAP. xvi. MUD PEODUCED BY GLACIEES. 325 
 
 loess, a step the more necessary, as a French geologist, for 
 whose knowledge and judgment I have great respect, tells 
 me he has come to the conclusion that ' the loess ' is ( a myth,' 
 having no real existence in a geological sense, or as holding 
 a definite place in the chronological series. 
 
 No doubt it is true that in every country, and at all 
 geological periods, rivers have been depositing fine loam on 
 their inundated plains in the manner explained above at 
 p. 34, where the Nile mud was spoken of. This mud of the 
 plains of Egypt, according to Professor BischofT's chemical 
 analysis, agrees closely in composition with the loess of the 
 Bhine.* I have also shown (p. 201), when speaking of the 
 fossil man of Natchez, how identical in mineral character, and 
 in the genera of its terrestrial and amphibious shells, is the 
 ancient fluviatile loam of the Mississippi with the loess of the 
 Ehine. But granting that loam presenting the same aspect has 
 originated at different times and in distinct hydrographical 
 basins, it is nevertheless true that, during the glacial period, 
 the Alps were a great centre of dispersion, not only of erratics, 
 as we have seen in the last chapter, and of gravel, which was 
 carried farther than the erratics, but also of very fine mud, 
 which was transported to still greater distances and in 
 greater volume down the principal river-courses between the 
 mountains and the sea. 
 
 Mud produced by Glaciers. 
 
 They who have visited Switzerland are aware that every 
 torrent which issues from an icy cavern at the extremity of a 
 glacier is densely charged with an impalpable powder, pro 
 duced by the grinding action to which the subjacent floor of 
 rock and the stones and sand frozen into the ice are exposed 
 in the manner before described. We may therefore readily 
 
 * Chemical and Physical Geology, yol. i. p. 132. 
 
326 FOSSIL SHELLS OF THE LOESS. CHAP. XVI. 
 
 conceive that a much greater volume of fine sediment was 
 swept along by rivers swollen by melting ice at the time of 
 the retreat of the gigantic glaciers of the olden time. The 
 fact that a large proportion of this mud, instead of being 
 carried to the ocean, where it might have formed a delta on 
 the coast, or have been dispersed far and wide by the tides 
 and currents, has accumulated in inland valleys, will be found 
 to be an additional proof of the former occurrence of those 
 grand oscillations in the level of the Alps and parts of the 
 adjoining continent which were required to explain the 
 alternate advance and retreat of the glaciers, and the super 
 position of more than one boulder clay and stratified alluvium 
 before mentioned, p. 321. 
 
 The position of the loess between Basle and Bonn is such 
 as to imply that the great valley of the Ehine had already 
 acquired its present shape, and in some places, perhaps more 
 than its actual depth and width, previously to the time when 
 it was gradually filled up to a great extent with fine loam. 
 The greater part of this loam has been since removed, so that 
 a fringe only of the deposit is now left on the flanks of the 
 boundary hills, or occasionally some outliers in the middle of 
 the great plain of the .Ehine where it expands in width. 
 
 These outliers are sometimes on such a scale as to admit of 
 minor hills and valleys, having been shaped out of them by 
 the action of rain and small streamlets, as near Freiburg in 
 the Brisgau and other districts. 
 
 Fossil Shells of the Loess. 
 
 The loess is generally devoid of fossils, although in many 
 places they are abundant, consisting of land-shells, all of 
 living species, and comprising no small part of the entire 
 molluscous fauna now inhabiting the same region. The 
 three shells most frequently met with are those represented in 
 
CHAP. XVI. FOSSIL SHELLS OF THE LOESS. 327 
 
 the annexed figures. The slug, called Succinea, is not strictly 
 aquatic, but lives in damp places, and may be seen in full 
 activity far from rivers, in meadows, where the grass is wet 
 with rain or dew ; but shells of the genera Limnea, Planorbis, 
 Paludina, Cyclas, and others, requiring to be constantly in the 
 water, are extremely exceptional in the loess, occurring only 
 at the bottom of the deposit, where it begins to alternate with 
 ancient river-gravel, on which it usually reposes. 
 
 This underlying gravel consists, in the valley of the Khine, 
 
 Fig. 44 Fig. 45 Fig. 46 
 
 4-4-* 
 
 Succinea elongata. 'Pupa muscorum. Helix hispida Lin. ; H. plebeium Jeffreys. 
 
 for the most part, of pebbles and boulders of Alpine origin, 
 showing that there was a time when the rivers had power to 
 convey coarse materials for hundreds of miles northwards 
 from Switzerland, towards the sea ; whereas, at a later period, 
 an entire change was brought about in the physical geography 
 of the same district, so that the same river deposited nothing 
 but fine mud, which accumulated to a thickness of 800 feet 
 or more above the original alluvial plain. 
 
 But although most of the fundamental gravel was derived 
 from the Alps, there has been observed in the neighbourhood 
 of the principal mountain chains bordering the great valley, 
 such as the Black Forest, Vosges, and Odenwald, an ad 
 mixture of detritus characteristic of those several chains. 
 We cannot doubt, therefore, that as some of these mountains, 
 especially the Vosges, had, during the glacial period, their 
 own glaciers, a part of the fine mud of their moraines must 
 have been mingled with loess of Alpine origin ; although the 
 principal mass of the latter must have come from Switzerland, 
 and can in fact be traced continuously from Basle to Belgium. 
 
328 GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF THE LOESS. CHAP. xvr. 
 
 Geographical Distribution of the Loess. 
 
 It was stated in the last chapter, p. 302, that at the time of 
 the greatest extension of the Swiss glaciers, the Lake of 
 Constance, and all the other great lakes, were filled with ice, 
 so that gravel and mud could pass freely from the upper 
 Alpine valley of the Rhine, to the lower region between Basle 
 and the sea, the great lake intercepting no part of the 
 moraines, whether fine or coarse. On the other hand, the Aar, 
 with its great tributaries the Limmat and the Eeuss, does not 
 join the Rhine till after it issues from the Lake of Constance ; 
 and by their channels a large part of the Alpine gravel and 
 mud could always have passed without obstruction into the 
 lower country, even after the ice of the great lake had melted. 
 
 It will give the reader some idea of the manner in which 
 the Rhenish loess occurs, if he is told that some of the earlier 
 scientific observers imagined it to have been formed in a vast 
 lake which occupied the valley of the Rhine from Basle to 
 Mayence, sending up arms or branches into what are now the 
 valleys of the Main, Necker, and other large rivers. They 
 placed the barrier of this imaginary lake in the narrow and 
 picturesque gorge of the Rhine between Bingen and Bonn : 
 and when it was objected that the lateral valley of the Lahn, 
 communicating with that gorge, had also been filled with loess, 
 they were compelled to transfer the great dam farther down, and 
 to place it below Bonn. Strictly speaking, it must be placed 
 much farther north, or in the 51st parallel of latitude, where 
 the limits of the loess have been traced out by MM. Omalius 
 D'Halloy, Dumont, and others, running east and west by 
 Cologne, Juliers, Louvain, Oudenarde, and Courtray, in 
 Belgium, to Cassel, near Dunkirk, in France. This boundary 
 line may not indicate the original seaward extent of the 
 formation, as it may have stretched still farther north, and its 
 present abrupt termination may only show how far it was 
 
CHAP. XVI. GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF THE LOESS. 329 
 
 cut back at some former period by the denuding action of 
 the sea. 
 
 Even if the imbedded fossil shells of the loess had 
 been lacustrine, instead of being, as we have seen, terrestrial 
 and amphibious, the vast height and width of the required 
 barrier would have been fatal to the theory of a lake : for the 
 loess is met with in great force at an elevation of no less than 
 1,600 feet above the sea, covering the Kaiserstuhl, a volcanic 
 mountain which stands in the jniddle of the great valley of the 
 Rhine, near Freiburg in Brisgau. The extent to which the 
 valley has there been the receptacle of fine mud afterwards 
 removed is most remarkable. 
 
 The loess of Belgium was called ' Hesbayan mud ' in the 
 geological map of the late M. Dumont, who, I am told, 
 recognised it as being in great part composed of Alpine mud. 
 M. d'Archiac, when speaking of the loess, observes that it en 
 velopes Hainault, Brabant, and Limburg like a mantle, 
 everywhere uniform and homogeneous in character, filling up 
 the lower depressions of the Ardennes, and passing thence 
 into the north of France, though not crossing into England. 
 In France, he adds, it is found on high plateaus, 600 feet 
 above some of the rivers, such as the Marne ; but as we go 
 southwards and eastwards of the basin of the Seine, it dimi 
 nishes in quantity, and finally thins out in those directions.* 
 It may even be a question whether the f limon des plateaux,' 
 or upland loam of the Somme valley, before alluded to, f may 
 not be a part of the same formation. As to the higher and 
 lower level gravels of that valley, which, like that of the Seine, 
 contain no foreign rocks,! we have seen that they are each of 
 them covered by deposits of loess or inundation-mud belong 
 ing respectively to the periods of the gravels, whereas the 
 upland loam is of much older date, more widely spread, and 
 
 * D'Archiac, Histoire des Progres, vol. ii. pp. 169, 170, 
 f No. 4, fig. 7, p. 103. | See above, p. 133. . 
 
330 THE LOESS IN BELGIUM. CHAP. xvi. 
 
 occupying positions often independent of the present lines of 
 drainage. To restore in imagination the geographical outline 
 of Picardy, to which rivers charged with so much homogeneous 
 loam, and running at such heights, may once have belonged, 
 is now impossible. 
 
 In the valley of the Ehine, as I before observed, the main 
 body of the loess, instead of having been formed at succes 
 sively lower and lower levels as in the case of the basin of the 
 Somme, was deposited in a wide and deep preexisting basin, 
 or strath, bounded by lofty mountain chains, such as the Black 
 Forest, Vosges, and Odenwald. In some places the loam 
 accumulated to such a depth as first to fill the valley and 
 then to spread over the adjoining table-lands, as in the case 
 of the Lower Eifel, where it encircled some of the modern 
 volcanic cones of loose pumice and ashes. In these in 
 stances it does not appear to me that the volcanoes were in 
 eruption during the time of the deposition of the loess, as 
 some geologists have supposed. The interstrtaification of 
 loam and volcanic ejectamenta was probably occasioned by 
 the fluviatile mud having gradually enveloped the cones of 
 loose scoriae after they were completely formed. I am the 
 more inclined to embrace this view after having seen the 
 junction of granite and loess on the steep slopes of some of 
 the mountains bounding the great plain of the Ehine on its 
 right bank in the Berg-strasse. Thus between Darmstadt 
 and Heidelberg perpendicular sections are seen of loess 200 
 feet thick, at various heights above the river, some of them 
 at elevations of 800 feet and upwards. In one of these may 
 be seen, resting on the hill side of Melibocus in the Odenwald, 
 the usual yellow loam free from pebbles at its contact with a 
 steep slope of granite, but divided into horizontal layers for a 
 short distance from the line of junction. In these layers, 
 which abut against the granite, a mixture of mica and of 
 unrounded grains of quartz and felspar occur, evidently 
 
CHAP. xvi. THE LOESS IN BELGIUM. 331 
 
 derived from the disintegration of the crystalline rock, which 
 must have decomposed in the atmosphere before the mud 
 had reached this height. Entire shells of Helix, Pupa, and 
 Sucrinea, of the usual living species, are embedded in the 
 granitic mixture. We may therefore be sure that the valley 
 bounded by steep hills of granite existed before the tranquil 
 accumulation of this vast body of loess. 
 
 During the re-excavation of the basin of the Ehine succes 
 sive deposits of loess of newer origin were formed at various 
 heights ; and it is often difficult to distinguish their relative 
 ages, especially as fossils are often entirely wanting, and the 
 mineral composition of the formation is so uniform. 
 
 The loess in Belgium is variable in thickness, usually 
 ranging from ten to thirty feet. It caps some of the highest 
 hills or table-land around Brussels at the height of 300 feet 
 above the sea. In such places it usually rests on gravel, and 
 rarely contains shells, but when they occur, they are of recent 
 species. I found the Succinea oblonga, before mentioned, 
 p. 327, and Helix hispida in the Belgian loess at JSTeerepen, 
 between Tongres and Hasselt, where M. Bosquet had pre 
 viously obtained remains of an elephant referred to E. primi- 
 genius. This pachyderm and Rhinoceros tichorhinus are 
 cited as characterising the loess in various parts of the valley 
 of the Rhine. Several perfect skeletons of the marmot have 
 been disinterred from the loess of Aix-la-Chapelle. But 
 much remains to be done in determining the species of mam 
 malia of this formation, and the relative altitudes above the 
 valley-plain at which they occur. 
 
 If we ascend the basin of the Neckar, we find that it is 
 filled with loess of great thickness, far above its junction with 
 the Rhine. At Canstadt near Stuttgart, loess resembling 
 that of the Rhine contains many fossil bones, especially those 
 of Elephas primigenius, together with some of Rhinoceros 
 tichorhinus, the species having been lately determined by 
 
332 LOESS IN BASINS OF THE NECKAK AND DANUBE. CHAP. xvi. 
 
 Dr. Falconer. At this place the loess is covered by a thick 
 bed of travertin, used as a building stone, the product of a 
 mineral spring. In the travertin are many fossil plants, all 
 recent except two, an oak and poplar, the leaves of which 
 Professor Heer has not been able to identify with any known 
 species. 
 
 Below the loess of Canstadt, in which bones of the mam 
 moth are so abundant, is a bed of gravel, evidently an old 
 river channel, now many feet above the level of the Neckar, 
 the valley having there been excavated to some depth below 
 its ancient channel so as to lie in the underlying red sand 
 stone or keuper. Although the loess, when traced from the 
 valley of the Rhine into that of the Neckar, or into any 
 other of its tributaries, often undergoes some slight alteration 
 in its character, yet there is so much identity of composition 
 as to suggest the idea, that the mud of the main river passed 
 far up the tributary valleys, just as that of the Mississippi, 
 during floods, flows far up the Ohio, carrying its mud with it 
 into the basin of that river. But the uniformity of colour 
 and mineral composition does not extend indefinitely into 
 the higher parts of every basin. In that of the Neckar, for 
 example, near Tubingen, I , found the fluviatile loam or 
 brick-earth, enclosing the usual helices and succinese, to 
 gether with the bones of the mammoth, very distinct in 
 colour and composition from ordinary Rhenish loess, and 
 such as no one could confound with Alpine mud. It is 
 mottled with red and green, like the New Red Sandstone or 
 keuper, from which it has clearly been derived. 
 
 Such examples, however, merely show that where a basin 
 is so limited in size that the detritus is derived chiefly, or 
 exclusively, from one formation, the prevailing rock will 
 impart its colour and composition in a very decided manner 
 to the loam ; whereas, in the basin of a great river which has 
 many tributaries, the loam will consist of a mixture of 
 
CHAP. xvi. THE POSITION OF THE LOESS. 333 
 
 almost every variety of rock, and will therefore exhibit an 
 average result nearly the same in all countries. Thus, the 
 loam which fills to a great depth the wide Valley of the 
 Saone, which is bounded on the west side by an escarpment 
 of inferior oolite, and by the chain of the Jura on the east, is 
 very like the loess found in the continuation of the same 
 great basin after the junction of the Ehone, by which a 
 large supply of Alpine mud has been added and intermixed. 
 In the higher parts of the basin of the Danube, loess of the 
 same character as that of the Khine, and which I believe to be 
 equally of Alpine origin, attains a far greater elevation above 
 the sea than any deposits of Ehenish loess. Mr. Stur informs 
 me that it also fills the valleys of the Carpathians, almost to 
 the height of the watershed between Austria and Hungary. 
 
 Oscillations of Level required to explain the Accumulation 
 and Denudation of the Loess. 
 
 A theory, therefore, which attempts to account for the 
 position of the loess cannot be satisfactory unless it be 
 equally applicable to the basins of the Khine and Danube. 
 So far as relates to the source of so much homogeneous loam, 
 there are many large tributaries of the Danube which, during 
 the glacial period, may have carried an ample supply of 
 moraine-mud from the Alps to that river ; and in regard to 
 grand oscillations in the level of the land, it is obvious that 
 the same movements, both downward and upward, of the 
 great mountain- chain would be attended with analogous 
 effects, whether the great rivers flowed northwards or east 
 wards. In each case fine loam would be accumulated during 
 subsidence, and removed during the upheaval of the land. 
 Changes, therefore, of level, analogous to those on which we 
 have been led to speculate when endeavouring to solve the 
 various problems presented by the glacial phenomena, are 
 
334 THE POSITION OF THE LOESS. CHAP. xvi. 
 
 equally available to account for the nature and geological 
 distribution of the loess. But we must suppose that the 
 amount of depression and re-elevation in the central region 
 was considerably in excess of that experienced in the lower 
 countries, or those nearer the sea, and that the rate of sub 
 sidence in the latter was never so considerable as to cause 
 submergence, or the admission of the sea into the interior of 
 the continent by the valleys of the principal rivers. 
 
 We have already assumed that the Alps were loftier than 
 now, when they were the source of those gigantic glaciers 
 which reached the flanks of the Jura. At that time gravel was 
 borne to the greatest distances from the central mountains 
 through the main valleys, which had a somewhat steeper slope 
 than now, and the quantity of river-ice must at that time 
 have aided in the transportation of pebbles and boulders. 
 To this state of things gradually succeeded another of an 
 opposite character, when the fall of the rivers from the 
 mountains to the sea became less and less, while the Alps 
 were slowly sinking, and the first retreat of the great glaciers 
 was taking place. Suppose the depression to have been at 
 the rate of five feet in a century in the mountains, and only 
 as many inches in the same time nearer the coast, still, in 
 such areas as the eye could survey at once, comprising a 
 small part only of Switzerland or of the basin of the Ehine, 
 the movement might appear to be uniform, and the pre 
 existing valleys and heights might seem to remain relatively 
 to each other as before. 
 
 Such inequality in the rate of rising or sinking, when we 
 contemplate large continental spaces, is quite consistent with 
 what we know of the course of nature in our own times, as 
 well as at remote geological epochs. Thus, in Sweden, as 
 before stated, the rise of land now in progress is nearly uni 
 form, as we proceed from north to south, for moderate distances; 
 but it greatly diminishes southwards if we compare areas 
 
CHAP. xvi. OSCILLATIONS OF LEYEL. 335 
 
 hundreds of miles apart ; so that, instead of the land subsiding 
 five feet in a hundred years, as at the North Cape, it becomes 
 less than the same number of inches at Stockholm, and 
 farther south the land is stationary, or, if not, seems rather 
 to be descending than ascending.* 
 
 To cite an example of high geological antiquity, M. Hebert 
 has demonstrated that, during the oolitic and cretaceous 
 periods, similar inequalities in the vertical movements of 
 the earth's crust took place in Switzerland and France. By 
 his own observations and those of M. Lory he has proved 
 that the area of the Alps was rising and emerging from 
 beneath the ocean towards the close of the oolitic epoch, and 
 was above water at the commencement of the cretaceous era ; 
 while, on the other hand, the area of the Jura, about one hun 
 dred miles to the north, was slowly sinking at the close of the 
 oolitic period, and had become submerged at the commence 
 ment of the cretaceous. Yet these oscillations of level were 
 accomplished without any perceptible derangement in the 
 strata, which remained all the while horizontal, so that the 
 lower cretaceous or neocomian beds were deposited conform 
 ably on the oolitic.f 
 
 Taking for granted then that the depression was more 
 rapid in the more elevated region, the great rivers would lose, 
 century after century, some portion of their velocity or 
 carrying power, and would leave behind them on their 
 alluvial plains more and more of the moraine-mud with 
 which they were charged, till at length, in the course of 
 thousands or some tens of thousands of years, a large part of 
 the main valleys would begin to resemble the plains of Egypt, 
 where nothing but mud is deposited during the flood season. 
 The thickness of loam containing shells of land and am- 
 
 * Principles of Geology, chap. xxx. de France, 2 series, torn. xvi. p. 596, 
 9th ed. p. 519 et seq. 1859. 
 
 f Bulletin de la Societe Greologique 
 
336 GANGETIC MUD AND EUROPEAN LOESS. CHAP. xvi. 
 
 phibious mollusca might in this way accumulate to any 
 extent, so that the waters might overflow some of the heights 
 originally bounding the valley, and deposits of 'platform 
 mud,' as it has been termed in France, might be extensively 
 formed. At length, whenever a re-elevation of the Alps at 
 the time of the second extension of the glaciers took place, 
 there would be renewed denudation and removal of such loess ; 
 and if, as some geologists believe, there has been more than 
 one oscillation of level in the Alps since the commencement 
 of the glacial period, the changes would be proportionally 
 more complicated, and terraces of gravel covered with loess 
 might be formed at different heights, and at different periods. 
 
 Himalayan Mud of the Ganges compared to European 
 
 Loess. 
 
 Some of the revolutions in physical geography above sug 
 gested for the continent of Europe during the post-pliocene 
 epoch, may have had their counterparts in India in the recent 
 period. The vast plains of Bengal are overspread with Hima 
 layan mud, which, as we ascend the Granges, extends inland 
 for 1,200 miles from the sea, continuing very homogeneous on 
 the whole, though becoming more sandy as it nears the hills. 
 They who sail down the river during a season of inundation 
 see nothing but a sheet of water in every direction, except 
 here and there where the tops of trees emerge above its level. 
 To what depth the mud extends is not known, but it resem 
 bles the loess in being generally devoid of stratification, and 
 of shells, though containing occasionally land shells in abun 
 dance, as well as calcareous concretions, called kunkur, which 
 may be compared to the nodules of carbonate of lime some 
 times observed to form layers in the Ehenish loess. I am 
 told by Colonel Strachey and Dr. Hooker, that below Cal 
 cutta, when the flood subsides, the Gangetic mud may be seen 
 
CHAP. xvi. GANaETIC MUD AND EUKOPEAN LOESS. 337 
 
 in river cliffs eighty feet high, in which they were unable to 
 detect organic remains, a remark which I found to hold 
 equally in regard to the recent mud of the Mississippi. 
 
 Dr. Wallich, while confirming these observations, informs me 
 that at certain points in Bengal, farther inland, he met with 
 land-shells in the banks of the great river. Borings have 
 been made at Calcutta, beginning not many feet above the 
 sea-level to the depth of 300 and 400 feet ; and wherever or 
 ganic remains were found in the strata pierced through, they 
 were of a fluviatile or terrestrial character, implying, that 
 during a long and gradual subsidence of the country, the 
 sediment thrown down by the Granges and Burrampooter 
 had accumulated at a sufficient rate to prevent the sea from 
 invading that region. 
 
 At the bottom of the borings, after passing through much 
 fine loam, beds of pebbles, sand, and boulders were reached, 
 such as might belong to an ancient river channel ; and the 
 bones of a crocodile, and the shell of a freshwater tortoise 
 imbedded in it, were met with, at the depth of four hundred 
 feet from the surface. No pebbles are now brought down 
 within a great distance of this point, so that the country 
 must once have had a totally different character, and may 
 have had its valleys, hills, and rivers, before all was reduced 
 to one common level by the accumulation upon it of fine 
 Himalayan mud. If the latter were removed during a 
 gradual re-elevation of the country, many old hydrographical 
 basins might reappear, and portions of the loam might alone 
 remain in terraces, on the flanks of hills, or on platforms, at 
 testing the vast extent, in ancient times, of the muddy enve 
 lope. A similar succession of events has, in all likelihood, 
 occurred in Europe during the deposition and denudation of 
 the loess of the post-pliocene period, which, as we have seen 
 in a former chapter, was long enough to allow of the gradual 
 development of almost any amount of such physical changes. 
 
338 HUMAN REMAINS NEAR MAESTRICHT. CHAP, xvi 
 
 Human Remains in Loess near Maestricht. 
 
 The banks of the Meuse at Maestricht, like those of the 
 Rhine at Bonn and Cologne, are slightly elevated above the 
 level of the alluvial plain. On the right bank of the Meuse, 
 opposite Maestricht, the difference of level is so marked, that 
 a bridge, with many arches, has been constructed to keep up, 
 during the flood season, a communication between the higher 
 parts of the alluvial plain, and the hills or bluffs which 
 bound it. This plain is composed of modern loess, undistin- 
 guishable in mineral character from that of higher antiquity, 
 before alluded to, and entirely without signs of successive 
 deposition, and devoid of terrestrial or fluviatile shells. It 
 is extensively worked for brick-earth to the depth of about 
 eight feet. The bluffs before alluded to often consist of a 
 terrace of gravel, from thirty to forty feet in thickness, covered 
 by an older loess, which is continuous as we ascend the valley 
 to Liege. In the suburbs of that city, patches of loess are 
 seen at the height of two hundred feet above the level of 
 the Meuse. The table-land in that region, composed of Car 
 boniferous and Devonian rocks, is about four hundred and 
 fifty feet high, and is not overspread with loess. 
 
 A terrace of gravel covered with loess has been mentioned 
 as existing on the right bank of the Meuse at Maestricht. 
 Answering to it another is also seen on the left bank below 
 that city, and a promontory of it projecting into the alluvial 
 plain of the Meuse, and approaching to within a hundred yards 
 of the river, was cut through during the excavation of a canal 
 running from Maestricht to Hocht, between the years 1815 
 and 1823. This section occurs at the village of Smeermass, 
 and is about sixty feet deep, the lower forty feet consisting of 
 stratified gravel, and the upper of twenty feet of loess. The 
 number of molars, tusks, and bones (probably parts of entire 
 
CBAP. XVI. HUMAN REMAINS NEAR MAESTRICHT. 33<J 
 
 skeletons) of elephants obtained during these diggings, was 
 extraordinary. Not a few of them are still preserved in the 
 museums of Maestricht and Leyden, together with some 
 horns of deer, bones of the ox-tribe and other mammalia, 
 and a human lower jaw, with teeth. According to Professor 
 Crahay, who published an account of it at the time, this jaw, 
 which is now preserved at Leyden, was found at the depth of 
 nineteen feet from the surface, where the loess joins the under 
 lying gravel, in a stratum of sandy loam resting on gravel, 
 and overlaid by some pebbly and sandy beds. The stratum 
 is said to have been intact and undisturbed, but the human 
 jaw was isolated, the nearest tusk of an elephant being six 
 yards removed from it in horizontal distance. 
 
 Most of the other mammalian bones were found, like these 
 human remains, in or near the gravel, but some of the tusks 
 and teeth of elephants were met with much nearer the sur 
 face. I visited the site of these fossils in 1860, in company 
 with M. van Binkhorst, and we found the description of the 
 ground, published by the late Professor Crahay of Louvain, 
 to be very correct.* The projecting portion of the terrace, 
 which was cut through in making the canal, is called the hill 
 of Caberg, which is flat-topped, sixty feet high, and has a 
 steep slope on both sides towards the alluvial plain. M. van 
 Binkhorst (who is the author of some valuable works on the 
 paleontology of the Maestricht chalk) has recently visited 
 Leyden, and ascertained that the human fossil above mentioned 
 is still entire in the museum of the university. Although 
 we had no opportunity of verifying the authenticity of 
 Professor Crahay's statements, we could see no reason for 
 suspecting the human jaw to belong to a different geological 
 period from that of the extinct elephant. If this were 
 
 * M. van Binkhorst has shown me moir was published in 1836 in the 
 the original MS. read to the Maes- Bulletin de 1' Academic Koyale de 
 tricht Athenseum in 1823. The me- Belgique, torn. iii. p. 43. 
 
 Z 2 
 
340 HUMAN REMAINS NEAR MAESTRICHT. CHAP. xvr. 
 
 granted, it might have no claims to a higher antiquity than 
 the human remains which Dr. Schmerling disentombed from 
 the Belgian caverns ; but the fact of their occurring in a 
 post-pliocene alluvial deposit in the open plains, would be 
 the first example of such a phenomenon. The top of the hill 
 of Caberg is not so high above the Meuse as is the terrace of 
 St. Acheul, with its flint implements above the Somme, but 
 at St. Acheul no human bones have yet been detected. 
 
 In the museum at Maestricht are preserved a human 
 frontal and a pelvic bone, stained of a dark peaty colour ; 
 the frontal very remarkable for its lowness, and the promi 
 nence of the superciliary ridges, which resemble those of the 
 Borreby skull, figured at p. 86. These remains may be the 
 same as those alluded to by Professor Crahay in his memoir, 
 where he says, that in a deposit in the suburbs of Hocht of a 
 black colour, were found leaves, nuts, and freshwater shells 
 in a very perfect state, and a human skull of a dark colour. 
 They were of an age long posterior to that of the loess con 
 taining the bones of elephants, and in which the human jaw 
 now at Leyden is said to have been embedded. 
 
 As to the human skeleton, alleged to have been found in 
 ancient loess at the village of Keer on the right bank of the 
 Meuse, opposite Maestricht, I explored the locality in com 
 pany with M. Bosquet, and we satisfied ourselves that the 
 proofs advanced in support of its antiquity cannot be de 
 pended upon. 
 
CHAP. xvii. POST-GLACIAL DISLOCATIONS. 341 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 POST-GLACIAL DISLOCATIONS AND FOLDINGS OF CRETACEOUS AND 
 DRIFT STRATA IN THE ISLAND OF MOEN, IN DENMARK. 
 
 GEOLOGICAL STRUCTURES OF THE ISLAND OF MOEN GREAT DIS 
 TURBANCES OF THE CHALK POSTERIOR IN DATE TO THE GLACIAL 
 
 DRIFT, WITH RECENT SHELLS M. PUGGAARD's SECTIONS OF THE CLIFFS 
 
 OF MOEN FLEXURES AND FAULTS COMMON TO THE CHALK AND 
 
 GLACIAL DRIFT DIFFERENT DIRECTION OF THE LINES OF SUCCESSIVE 
 
 MOVEMENT, FRACTURE, AND FLEXURE UNDISTURBED CONDITION OF 
 
 THE ROCKS IN THE ADJOINING DANISH ISLANDS UNEQUAL MOVEMENT^ 
 
 OF UPHEAVAL IN FINMARK EARTHQUAKE OF NEW ZEALAND IN 1855 
 
 PREDOMINANCE IN ALL AGES OF UNIFORM CONTINENTAL MOVEMENTS 
 
 OVER. THOSE BY WHICH THE ROCKS ARE LOCALLY CONVULSED. 
 
 IN the preceding chapters I have endeavoured to show that 
 the study of the successive phases of the glacial period 
 in Europe, and the enduring marks which they have left on 
 many of the solid rocks and on the character of the super 
 ficial drift, are of great assistance in enabling us to appreciate 
 the vast lapse of ages which are comprised in the post- 
 pliocene epoch. They enlarge at the same time our concep 
 tion of the antiquity, not only of the living species of animals 
 and plants, but of their present geographical distribution, 
 and throw light on the chronological relations of these spe 
 cies to the earliest date yet ascertained for the existence of 
 the human race. That date, it will be seen, is very remote if 
 compared to the times of history and tradition, yet very 
 modern if contrasted with the length of time during which 
 all the living testacea, and even many of the mammalia, have 
 inhabited the globe. 
 
 In order to render my account of the phenomena of the 
 
342 FOLDINGS OF STEATA CHAP. xvn. 
 
 glacial epoch more complete, I shall describe in this chapter 
 some other changes in physical geography, and in the in 
 ternal structure of the earth's crust, which" have happened 
 in the post-pliocene period, because they differ in kind from 
 any previously alluded to, and are of a class which were 
 thought by the earlier geologists to belong exclusively to 
 epochs anterior to the origin of the existing fauna and flora. 
 Of this nature are those faults and violent local dislocations 
 of the rocks, and those sharp bendings and foldings of the 
 strata, which we so often behold in mountain chains, and 
 sometimes in low countries also, especially where the rock- 
 formations are of ancient date. 
 
 Post-glacial Dislocations and Foldings of cretaceous and 
 drift Strata in the Island of Moen, Denmark 
 
 A striking illustration of such convulsions of post-pliocene 
 date may be seen in the Danish island of Moen, which 
 is situated about fifty miles south of Copenhagen. The 
 island is about sixty miles in circumference, and consists of 
 white chalk, several hundred feet thick, overlaid by boulder 
 clay and sand, or glacial drift which is made up of several 
 subdivisions, some unstratified and others stratified, the whole 
 having a mean thickness of sixty feet, but sometimes attain 
 ing nearly twice that thickness. In one of the oldest members 
 of the formation, fossil marine-shells of existing species have 
 been found. 
 
 Throughout the greater part of Moen, the strata of the 
 drift are undisturbed and horizontal, as are those of the 
 subjacent chalk ; but on the north-eastern coast they have 
 been, throughout a certain area, bent, folded, and shifted, 
 together with the beds of the underlying cretaceous forma 
 tion. Within this area they have been even more deranged 
 than is the English chalk with flints along the central axis 
 
CHAP. xvii. IN THE ISLAND OF MOEN. 343 
 
 of the Isle of Wight in Hampshire, or of Purbeck in Dorset 
 shire. The whole displacement of the chalk is evidently 
 posterior in date to the origin of the drift, since the beds of 
 the latter are horizontal where the fundamental chalk is hori 
 zontal, and inclined, curved, or vertical where the chalk dis 
 plays signs of similar derangement. Although I had come 
 to these conclusions respecting the structure of Moen in 
 1835, after devoting several days in company with Dr. Forch- 
 hammer to its examination,* I should have hesitated to cite 
 the spot as exemplifying convulsions on so grand a scale, of 
 such extremely modern date, had not the island been since 
 thoroughly investigated by a most able and reliable authority, 
 the Danish geologist, Professor Puggaard, who has published 
 a series of detailed sections of the cliffs. 
 
 These cliffs extend through the north-eastern coast of the 
 island, called Moens Klint,f where the chalk precipices are 
 bold and picturesque, being 300 and 400 feet high, with tall 
 beech-trees growing on their summits, and covered here and 
 there at their base with huge taluses of fallen drift, verdant 
 with wild shrubs and grass, by which the monotony of a 
 continuous range of white chalk cliffs is prevented. 
 
 In the low part of the island, at A, fig. 47, or the southern 
 extremity of the line of section above alluded to, the drift 
 is horizontal, but when we reach B, a change, both in the 
 height of the cliffs and in the inclination of the strata, begins 
 to be perceptible, and the chalk No. 1 soon makes its appear 
 ance from beneath the overlying members of the drift 
 Nos. 2, 3, 4, and 5. 
 
 This chalk, with its layers of flints, is so like that of 
 England as to require no description. The incumbent 
 
 * Lyell, Geological Transactions, Bern, 1851; and Bulletin de la So- 
 2nd series, vol. ii. p. 243. ciete" Geologique de France, 1851. 
 
 t Puggaard, Geologiedlnsel Moen, 
 
344 
 
 STRUCTURE OF ISLAND OF MOEN : 
 
 CHAP. XVII. 
 
 drift consists of the following subdivisions, beginning with 
 the lowest : 
 
 No. 2. Stratified loam and sand, five feet thick, containing 
 at one spot, near the base of the cliff at s, fig. 48, Cardium 
 edule, Tellina solidula, and Turritella, with fragments of 
 other shells. Between No. 2 and the chalk No. 1, there 
 usually intervenes a breccia of broken chalk flints. 
 
 No. 3. Unstratified blue clay or till, with small pebbles 
 
 Fig. 47 
 
 Southern extremity of Moens Klint (Puggaard). 
 
 A Horizontal drift. 
 
 B Chalk and overlying drift beginning to rise. 
 
 c First flexure and fault. Height of cliff at this point, 180 feet. 
 
 Fig. 48 
 
 Section of Moens Klint (Puggaard), continued from fig. 47. 
 
 s Fossil shells of recent species in the drift at this point.^ 
 G Greatest height near G, 280 feet. 
 
 and fragments of Scandinavian rocks occasionally scattered 
 through it, twenty feet thick. 
 
 No. 4. A second unstratified mass of yellow and more sandy 
 clay forty feet thick, with pebbles and angular polished and 
 striated blocks of granite and other Scandinavian rocks, 
 transported from a distance. 
 
 No. 5. Stratified sands and gravel, with occasionally large 
 
CHAP. xvii. M. PUGGAARD'S SECTIONS. 345 
 
 erratic blocks ; the whole mass varying from forty to a hun 
 dred feet in thickness, but this only in a few spots. 
 
 The angularity of many of the blocks in Nos. 3 and 4, and 
 the glaciated surfaces of others, and the transportation from 
 a distance attested by their crystalline nature, proves them to 
 belong to the northern drift or glacial period. 
 
 It will be seen that the four subdivisions 2, 3, 4, and 5, begin 
 to rise at B, fig. 47, and that at c, where the cliff is 180 feet 
 high, there is a sharp flexure shared equally by the chalk and 
 the incumbent drift. Between D and G, fig. 48, we observe a 
 great fracture in the rocks with synclinal and anticlinal folds, 
 exhibited in cliffs nearly 300 feet high, the drift beds partici 
 pating in all the bendings of the chalk ; that is to say, the 
 three lower members of the drift, including No. 2, which, at 
 the point s in this diagram, contains the shells of recent 
 species before alluded to. 
 
 Near the northern end of the Moens Klint, at a place 
 called 'Taler,' more than 300 feet high, are seen similar 
 folds, so sharp that there is an appearance of four distinct 
 alternations of the glacial and cretaceous formations in vertical 
 or highly inclined beds ; the chalk at one point bending over, 
 so that the position of all the beds is reversed. 
 
 But the most wonderful shiftings and faultings of the beds 
 are observable in the Dronningestol, part of the same cliff, 400 
 feet in perpendicular height, where, as shown in fig. 49 (p. 346), 
 the drift is thoroughly entangled and mixed up with the 
 dislocated chalk. 
 
 If we follow the lines of fault, we may see, says M. Puggaard, 
 along the planes of contact of the shifted beds, the marks of 
 polishing and rubbing, which the chalk flints have undergone, 
 as have many stones in the gravel of the drift, and some of 
 these have also been forced into the soft chalk. The manner 
 in which the top of some of the arches of bent chalk have 
 been cut off in this and several adjoining sections, attests the 
 
346 
 
 M. PUaGAAKD's CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 CHAP. XVII. 
 
 great denudation which accompanied the disturbances, portions 
 of the bent strata having been removed, probably while they 
 were emerging from beneath the sea. 
 
 Fig. 49 
 
 Post-glacial disturbances of vertical, folded, and shifted strata of chalk and drift, 
 in the Dronningestol Moen, height 400 feet (Puggaard). 
 
 1 Chalk, with flints. 
 
 2 Marine stratified loam, lowest member of glacial formation. 
 
 3 Blue clay or till, with erratic blocks unstratified. 
 
 4 Yellow sandy till, with pebbles and glaciated boulders. 
 
 5 Stratified sand and gravel with erratics. 
 
 M. Puggaard has deduced the following conclusions from 
 his study of these cliffs. 
 
 1st. The white chalk, when it was still in horizontal strati 
 fication, but after it had suffered considerable denudation, 
 subsided gradually, so that the lower beds of drift No. 2, with 
 their littoral shells, were superimposed on the chalk in a 
 shallow sea. 
 
 2nd. The overlying unstratified boulder clays 3 and 4 
 were thrown down in deeper water by the aid of floating ice 
 coming from the north. 
 
 3rd. Irregular subsidences then began, and occasionally 
 partial failures of support, causing the bending and sometimes 
 the engulfment of overlying masses both of the chalk and 
 drift, and causing the various dislocations above described 
 and depicted. The downward movement continued till it 
 exceeded 400 feet, for upon the surface even of No 5, in some 
 parts of the island, lie huge erratics twenty feet or more in 
 
CHAP. xvii. DIRECTIONS OF SUCCESSIVE MOVEMENTS. 347 
 
 diameter, which imply that they were carried by ice in a sea 
 of sufficient depth to float large ice-bergs. 
 
 4th. After this subsidence, the re-elevation and partial 
 denudation of the cretaceous and glacial beds took place 
 during a general upward movement, like that now ex 
 perienced in parts of Sweden and Norway. 
 
 In regard to the lines of movement in Moen, M. Puggaard 
 believes, after an elaborate comparison of the cliffs with the 
 interior of the island, that they took at least three distinct 
 directions at as many successive eras, all of post-glacial date ; 
 the first line running from ESE. to WNW., with lines 
 of fracture at right angles to them ; the second running from 
 SSE. to NNW., also with fractures in a transverse direc 
 tion ; and lastly, a sinking in a N. and S. direction, with other 
 subsidences of contemporaneous date running at right angles, 
 or E. and W. 
 
 When we approach the north-west end of Moens Klint, or 
 the range of coast above described, the strata begin to be 
 less bent and broken, and, after travelling for a short distance 
 beyond, we find the chalk and overlying drift in the same 
 horizontal position as at the southern end of the Moens Klint. 
 What makes these convulsions the more striking is the fact 
 that in the other adjoining Danish islands, as well as in a 
 large part of Moen itself, both the secondary and tertiary 
 formations are quite undisturbed. 
 
 It is impossible to behold such effects of reiterated local 
 movements, all of post-tertiary date, without reflecting that, 
 but for the accidental presence of the stratified drift, all of 
 which might easily, where there has been so much denudation, 
 have been missing, even if it had once existed, we might 
 have referred the vertically and flexures and faults of the 
 rocks to an ancient period, such as the era between the chalk 
 with flints and the Maestricht chalk, or to the time of the 
 latter formation, or to the eocene, or miocene, or older 
 
348 UNEQUAL MOVEMENT IN FINMARK. CHAP, xvn, 
 
 pliocene eras, even the last of them, long prior to the com 
 mencement of the glacial epoch. Hence we may be permitted 
 to suspect that in some other regions, where we have no such 
 means at our command for testing the exact date of certain 
 movements, the time of their occurrence may be far more 
 modern than we usually suppose. In this way some apparent 
 anomalies in the position of erratic blocks, seen occasionally 
 at great heights above the parent rocks from which they 
 have been detached, might be explained, as well as the irre 
 gular direction of certain glacial furrows like those described 
 by Professor Keilhau and Mr. Horbye on the mountains of 
 the Dovrefjeld in lat. 62 N., where the striation and friction 
 is said to be independent of the present shape and slope of 
 the mountains.* Although even in such cases it remains to 
 be proved whether a general crust of continental ice, like that 
 of Greenland, described by Rink (see above, p. 235), would 
 not account for the deviation of the furrows and striae from the 
 normal directions which they ought to have followed had they 
 been due to separate glaciers filling the existing valleys. 
 
 It appears that in general the upward movements in Scan 
 dinavia, which have raised sea-beaches containing marine 
 shells of recent species to the height of several hundred feet, 
 have been tolerably uniform over very wide spaces ; yet a 
 remarkable exception to this rule was observed by M. Bravais, 
 at Altenfiord, in Finmark, between lat. 70 and 71 N. 
 An ancient water-level, indicated by a sandy deposit forming 
 a terrace, and by marks of the erosion of the*waves, can be 
 followed for thirty miles from south to north along the 
 borders of a fiord rising gradually from a height of eighty-five 
 feet to an elevation of 220 feet above the sea, or at the rate 
 of about four feet in a mile.f 
 
 To pass to another and very remote part of the world, we 
 
 * Observations sur les Phenomenes f Proceedings of the Geological 
 
 d'Erosion en Norwege, 1857. Society, 1845, vol. iv. p. 94. 
 
CHAP. xvii. EARTHQUAKES IN NEW ZEALAND. 349 
 
 have witnessed, so late as January 1855, in the northern 
 island of New Zealand, a sudden and permanent rise of land 
 on the northern shores of Cook's straits, which at one point, 
 called Muko-muka, was so unequal as to amount to nine feet 
 vertically, while it declined gradually from this maximum of 
 upheaval in a distance of about twenty-three miles north 
 west of the greatest rise, to a point where no change of level 
 was perceptible. Mr. Edward Koberts, of the Eoyal Engineers, 
 employed by the British Government at the time of the 
 shock in executing public works on the coast, ascertained 
 that the extreme upheaval of certain ancient rocks followed 
 a line of fault running at least ninety miles from south to 
 north into the interior ; and, what is of great geological 
 interest, immediately to the east of this fault, the country, 
 consisting of tertiary strata, remained unmoved or stationary ; 
 a fact well established by the position of a line of nullipores 
 marking the sea-level before the earthquake, both on the 
 surface of the tertiary and paleozoic rocks.* 
 
 The repetition of such unequal movements, especially if 
 they recurred at intervals along the same lines of fracture, 
 would in the course of ages cause the strata to dip at a high 
 angle in one direction, while towards the opposite point of 
 the compass they would terminate abruptly in a steep escarp 
 ment. 
 
 But it is probable that the multiplication of such move 
 ments in the post-tertiary period has rarely been so great as 
 to produce results like those above described in Moen, for 
 the principal movements in any given period seem to be of 
 that more uniform kind spoken of at p. 334, by which the 
 topography of limited districts and the position of the 
 strata are not visibly altered except in their height relatively 
 
 * Bulletin de la Socie~te Geologique municated to me by Messrs. Eoberts 
 de France, vol. xiii. p. 660, 1856, and Walter ManteU. 
 where I have described the facts com- 
 
350 UNIFORM MOVEMENT PREDOMINATES. CHAP. xvu. 
 
 to the sea. Were it otherwise we should not find conform 
 able strata of all ages, including the primary fossiliferous of 
 shallow-water origin, which must have remained horizontal 
 throughout vast areas during downward movements of several 
 thousand feet, going on at the period of their accumulation. 
 Still less should we find the same primary strata, such as the 
 carboniferous, Devonian, or Silurian, still remaining hori 
 zontal over thousands of square leagues, as in parts of North 
 America and Eussia, having escaped dislocation and flexure 
 throughout the entire series of epochs which separate paleozoic 
 from recent times. Not that they have been motionless, for 
 they have undergone so much denudation, and of such a kind, 
 as can only be explained by supposing the strata to have 
 been subjected to great oscillations of level, and exposed in 
 some cases repeatedly to the destroying and planing action of 
 the waves of the sea. 
 
 It seems probable that the successive convulsions in Moen 
 were contemporary with those upward and downward move 
 ments of the glacial period which were described in the 
 thirteenth and some of the following chapters, and that they 
 ended before the upper beds of No. 5, p. 346, with its large 
 erratic blocks, were deposited, as some of those beds occurring 
 in the disturbed parts of Moen appear to have escaped the 
 convulsions to which Nos. 2, 3, and 4 were subjected. If 
 this be so, the whole derangement, although post-pliocene, 
 may have been anterior to the human epoch, or rather to the 
 earliest date to which the existence of man has as yet been 
 traced back. 
 
CHAP. xvm. GLACIAL PERIOD IN NORTH AMERICA. 35T 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 THE GLACIAL PERIOD IN NORTH AMERICA. 
 
 POST-GLACIAL STRATA CONTAINING REMAINS OF MASTODON GIGANTEUS 
 
 IN NORTH AMERICA SCARCITY OF MARINE SHELLS IN GLACIAL DRIFT 
 
 OF CANADA AND THE UNITED STATES GREATER SOUTHERN EXTENSION 
 
 OF ICE-ACTION IN NORTH AMERICA THAN IN EUROPE TRAINS OF 
 
 ERRATIC BLOCKS OF VAST SIZE IN BERKSHIRE, MASSACHUSETTS 
 
 DESCRIPTION OF THEIR LINEAR ARRANGEMENT AND POINTS OF DE 
 PARTURE THEIR TRANSPORTATION REFERRED TO FLOATING AND 
 
 COAST ICE GENERAL REMARKS ON THE CAUSES OF FORMER CHANGES 
 
 OF CLIMATE AT SUCCESSIVE GEOLOGICAL EPOCHS SUPPOSED EFFECTS 
 
 OF THE DIVERSION OF THE GULF STREAM IN A NORTHERLY INSTEAD 
 
 OF NORTH-EASTERLY DIRECTION DEVELOPMENT OF EXTREME COLD 
 
 ON THE OPPOSITE SIDES OF THE ATLANTIC LN THE GLACIAL PERIOD 
 NOT STRICTLY SIMULTANEOUS NUMBER OF SPECIES OF PLANTS AND 
 ANIMALS COMMON TO PRE-GLACIAL AND POST-GLACIAL TIMES. 
 
 ON the North American Continent, between the arctic 
 circle and the 42nd parallel of latitude, we meet with 
 signs of ice-action on a scale as grand if not grander than in 
 Europe ; and there also the excess of cold appears to have been 
 first felt, at the close of the tertiary, and to have continued 
 throughout a large portion of the post-pliocene period. 
 
 The general absence of organic remains in the North 
 American glacial formation, makes it as difficult as in Europe, 
 to determine what mammalia lived on the continent at the 
 time of the most intense refrigeration, or when extensive 
 areas were becoming strewed over with glacial drift and 
 erratic blocks, but it is certain that a large proboscidean now 
 extinct, the Mastodon giganteus Cuv., together with many 
 other quadrupeds, some of them now living and others 
 extinct, played a conspicuous part in the post-glacial era. 
 By its frequency as a fossil species, this pachyderm represents 
 
352 REMAINS OF MASTODON GIGANTEUS. CHAP. xvm. 
 
 the European Mephas primigenius, although the latter also 
 occurs fossil in the United States and Canada, and abounds, 
 as I learn from Sir John Kichardson, in latitudes farther north 
 than those to which the mastodon has been traced. 
 
 In the state of New York, the mastodon is not unfrequently 
 met with in bogs and lacustrine deposits formed in hollows in 
 the drift, and therefore, in a geological position, much resem 
 bling that of recent peat and shell-marl in the British Isles, 
 Denmark, or the Valley of the Somme, as before described. 
 Sometimes entire skeletons have been discovered within a 
 few feet of the surface, in peaty earth at the bottom of small 
 ponds, which the agriculturists had drained. The shells in 
 these cases belong to freshwater genera, such as Limnea, 
 PTiysa, Planorbis, Cyclas, and others, differing from Euro 
 pean species, but the same as those now proper to ponds and 
 lakes in the same parts of America. 
 
 I have elsewhere given an account of several of these 
 localities which I visited in 1842,* and can state that they 
 certainly have a more modern aspect than almost all the 
 European deposits in which remains of the mammoth occur, 
 although a few instances are cited of Elephas primigenius 
 having been dug out of peat in Great Britain. Thus I was 
 shown a mammoth's tooth in the museum at Torquay, in 
 Devonshire, which is believed to have been dredged up from 
 a deposit of vegetable matter now partially submerged beneath 
 the sea. A more elevated part of the same peaty formation 
 constitutes the bottom of the valley in which Tor Abbey 
 stands. This individual elephant must certainly have been of 
 more modern date than his fellows found fossil in the gravel of 
 the Brixham cave, before described (p. 100), for it flourished 
 when the physical geography of Devonshire, unlike that of 
 the cave period, was almost identical with that now established. 
 
 * Travels in North America, vol. i. p. 55, London, 1845 ; and Manual of 
 Geology, ch. xiL 5th ed. p. 144. 
 
CHAP, xviir. AGE OF THE MASTODON. 353 
 
 I cannot help suspecting that many tusks and teeth of the 
 mammoth, said to have been found in peat, may be as spu 
 rious as are the horns of the rhinoceros cited more than once 
 in the s Memoirs of the Wernerian Society,' as having been ob 
 tained from shell-marl in Forfarshire and other Scotch coun 
 ties ; yet, between the period when the mammoth was most 
 abundant, and that when it died out, there must have elapsed 
 a long interval of ages when it was growing more and more 
 scarce ; and we may expect to find occasional stragglers buried 
 in deposits long subsequent in date to others, until at last we 
 may succeed in tracing a passage from the post-pliocene to 
 the recent fauna, by geological monuments, which will fill 
 up the gap before alluded to (p. 144) as separating the era 
 of the flint tools of Amiens and Abbeville from that of the peat 
 of the Valley of the Somme. 
 
 How far the lacustrine strata of North America, above 
 mentioned, may help to lessen this hiatus, and whether some 
 individuals of the Mastodon giganteus may have come down 
 to the confines of the historical period, is a question not so 
 easily answered as might at first sight be supposed. A geolo 
 gist might naturally imagine that the fluviatile formation of 
 Groat Island, seen at the falls of Niagara, and at several 
 points below the falls,* was very modern, seeing that the 
 fossil shells contained in it are all of species now inhabiting 
 the waters of the Niagara, and seeing also that the deposit is 
 more modern than the glacial drift of the same locality. In 
 fact, the old river bed, in which bones of the mastodon occur, 
 holds the same position relatively to the boulder formation as 
 tbe strata of shell-marl and boggy-earth, with bones of mas 
 todon, so frequent in the State of New York, bear to the glacial 
 drift, and all may be of contemporaneous date. But in the 
 case of the valley of the Niagara, we happen to have a measure 
 
 * Travels in North America, by the Author, vol. i. ch. ii. ; and vol. ii. ch. xix. 
 
 AA 
 
354 GLACIAL DEPOSITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAP. XVJIT. 
 
 of time, which is wanting in the other localities, namely, 
 the test afforded by the recession of the falls, an operation 
 still in progress, by which the 'deep ravine of the Niagara, 
 seven miles long, between Queenstown and Goat Island, has 
 been hollowed out. This ravine is not only post-glacial, but 
 also posterior in date to the fluviatile or mastodon-bearing 
 beds. The individual therefore found fossil near Groat Island 
 flourished before the gradual excavation of the deep and long 
 chasm, and we must reckon its antiquity, not by thousands, 
 but by tens of thousands of years, if I have correctly estimated 
 the minimum of time which was required for the erosion of 
 that great ravine.* 
 
 The stories widely circulated of bones of the mastodon 
 having been observed with their surfaces pierced as if by 
 arrow-heads, or bearing the marks of wounds inflicted 
 by some stone implement, must in future be more carefully 
 inquired into, for we can scarcely doubt that the mastodon 
 in North America lived down to a period when the mammoth 
 coexisted with man in Europe. But I need say no more on 
 this subject, having already (p. 200) explained my views in 
 regard to the evidence of the antiquity of man in North 
 America, when treating of the human bone discovered at 
 Natchez, on the Mississippi. 
 
 In Canada and the United States, we experience the same 
 difficulty as in Europe, when we attempt to distinguish 
 between glacial formations of submarine and those of supra- 
 marine origin. In the New World, as in Scotland and 
 England, marine shells of this era have rarely been traced 
 higher than five hundred feet above the sea, and seven hun 
 dred feet seems to be the maximum to which at present they 
 are known to ascend. In the same countries, erratic blocks 
 have travelled from N. to S., following the same direction as 
 
 * Principles of Geology, 9th ed. p. 2 ; and Travels in North America, TO! i. 
 p. 32, 1845. 
 
CHAP, xviii. ICE-ACTION IN NOKTH AMEEICA. 355 
 
 the glacial furrows and striae imprinted almost everywhere on 
 the solid rocks underlying the drift. Their direction rarely 
 deviates more than fifteen degrees E. or W. of the meridian, 
 so that we can scarcely doubt, in spite of the general dearth 
 of marine shells, that icebergs floating in the sea, and often 
 running aground on its rocky bottom, were the instruments 
 by which most of the blocks were conveyed to southern 
 latitudes. 
 
 There are, nevertheless, in the United States, as in Europe, 
 several groups of mountains which have acted as independent 
 centres for the dispersion of erratics, as, for example, the 
 White Mountains, latitude 44 N., the highest of which, 
 Mount Washington, rises to about 6,300 feet above the sea ; 
 and according to Professor Hitchcock, some of the loftiest 
 of the hills of Massachusetts once sent down their glaciers 
 into the surrounding lower country. 
 
 Great southern Extension of Trains of Erratic Blocks in 
 Berkshire, Massachusetts, U. S., lat. 42 N. 
 
 Having treated so fully in this volume of the events of the 
 glacial period, I am unwilling to conclude without laying 
 before the reader the evidence displayed in North America, 
 of ice-action in latitudes farther south, by about ten degrees 
 than any seen on an equal scale in Europe. This extension 
 southwards of glacial phenomena, in regions where there are 
 no snow-covered mountains like the Alps to explain the ex 
 ception, nor any hills of more than moderate elevation, consti 
 tutes a feature of the western as compared to the eastern 
 side of the Atlantic, and must be taken into account when we 
 speculate on the causes of the refrigeration of the northern 
 hemisphere during the post-pliocene period. 
 
 In 1852, accompanied by Mr. James Hall, State geologist 
 of New York, author of many able and well-known works 
 
 A A 2 
 
356 ICE- ACTION IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAP. xvui. 
 
 on geology and paleontology, I examined the glacial drift 
 and erratics of the county of Berkshire, Massachusetts, and 
 those of the adjoining parts of the State of New York, a 
 district about 130 miles inland from the Atlantic coast, 
 and situated due west of Boston, in lat. 42 25' north. This 
 latitude corresponds in Europe to that of the north of Por 
 tugal. Here numerous detached fragments of rock are seen, 
 having a linear arrangement or being continuous in long 
 parallel trains, running nearly in straight lines over hill and 
 dale for distances of five, ten, and twenty miles, and some 
 times greater distances. Seven of the more conspicuous 
 of these trains, from 1 to 7 inclusive, fig. 50, are laid down 
 in the accompanying map or ground plan.* It will be re 
 marked that they run in a NW. and SE. direction, or almost 
 transversely to the ranges of hills A, B, and c, which run NNE. 
 and SSW. The crests of these chains are about 800 feet in 
 height above the intervening valleys. The blocks of the 
 northernmost train, No. 7, are of limestone, derived from the 
 calcareous chain B ; those of the two trains next to the south, 
 Nos. 6 and 5, are composed exclusively in the first part of 
 their course of a green chloritic rock of great toughness, 
 but after they have passed the ridge B, a mixture of calcareous 
 blocks is observed. After traversing the valley for a distance 
 of six miles, these two trains pass through depressions or gaps 
 in the range c, as they had previously done in crossing the 
 range B, showing that the dispersion of the erratics bears some 
 relation to the actual inequalities of the surface, although the 
 course of the same blocks is perfectly independent of the 
 more leading features of the geography of the country, or 
 those by which the present lines of drainage are determined. 
 The greater number of the green chloritic fragments in 
 
 * This ground plan, and a further livered by me to the Koyal Institu- 
 account of the Berkshire erratics, was tion of Great Britain, April 27, 1855, 
 given in an abstract of a lecture de- and published in their Proceedings. 
 
CHAP, xvill. REMARKABLE TRAINS OF ERRATIC BLOCKS. 357 
 
 Fig. 50 
 
 s \V? 
 
 00 '.^ 6. 
 
 Rich.in.onil Valley. '; 
 
 MAP SHOWING THE RELATIVE POSITION AND DIRECTION OF SEVEN TRAINS OF 
 ERRATIC BLOCKS IN BERKSHIRE, MASSACHUSETTS, AND IN PART OF THE STATE 
 OF NEW YORK. 
 
 Distance in a straight line, between the mountain ranges A and c, about 
 
 A Canaan range, in the State of New York. The crest consists of green 
 chloritic rock. 
 
 B Bichmond range, the western division of which consists in Merriman's 
 Mount of the same green rock as A, but in a more schistose form, while the 
 eastern division is composed of slaty limestone. 
 
 c The Lenox range, consisting in part of mica-schist, and in some districts 
 of crystalline limestone. 
 
 d Knob in the range A, from which most of the train No. 6 is supposed "o 
 have been derived. 
 
 e Supposed starting point of the train No. 5 in the range A. 
 
 / Hiatus of 175 yards, or space without blocks. 
 
 g Sherman's House. 
 
 h Perry's Peak. 
 
 k FlatKock. 
 
 I Merriman's Mount. 
 
358 REMARKABLE TRAINS OF ERRATIC BLOCKS. CHAP. xvm. 
 
 m Dupey's Mount. 
 
 n Largest block of train, No. 6. See figs. 51 and 52, p. 359. 
 
 p Point of divergence of part of the train No. 6, where a branch is sent off 
 to No. 5. 
 
 No. 1 The most southerly train examined by Messrs. Hall and Lyell, 
 between Stockbridge and Kichmond, composed of blocks of black slate, blue 
 limestone, and some of the green Canaan rock, with here and there a boulder 
 of white quartz. 
 
 No. 2 Train composed chiefly of large limestone masses, some of them 
 divided into two or more fragments, by natural joints. 
 
 No. 3 Train composed of blocks of limestone and the green Canaan rock ; 
 passes south of the Kichmond Station on the Albany and Boston railway; is 
 less defined than Nos. 1 and 2. 
 
 No. 4 Train chiefly of limestone blocks, some of them thirty feet in 
 diameter, running to the north-west of the Eichmond Station, and passing 
 south of the Methodist Meeting-house, where it is intersected by a railway 
 cutting. 
 
 No. 5 South train of Dr. Eeid, composed entirely of large blocks of the 
 green chloritic Canaan rock ; passes north of the Old Eichmond Meeting-house, 
 and is three-quarters of a mile north of the preceding train (No. 4). 
 
 No. 6 The great or principal train (north train of Dr. Eeid), composed of 
 very large blocks of the Canaan rock, diverges at p, and unites by a branch 
 with train No. 5. 
 
 No. 7 A well-defined train of limestone blocks, with a few of the Canaan 
 rock, traced from the Eichmond to the slope of the Lenox range. 
 
 trains 5 and 6 have evidently come from the ridge A, 
 and a large proportion of the whole from its highest summit, 
 d, where the crest of the ridge has been worn into those dome- 
 shaped masses called f roches moutonnees,' already alluded to 
 (pp. 269 and 293), and where several fragments having this 
 shape, some of them thirty feet long, are seen in situ, others 
 only slightly removed from their original position, as if they 
 had been just ready to set out on their travels. Although 
 smooth and rounded on their tops, they are angular on their 
 lower parts, where their outline has been derived from the 
 natural joints of the rock. Had these blocks been conveyed 
 from d by glaciers, they would have radiated in all directions 
 from a centre, whereas not one even of the smaller ones is 
 found to the westward of A, though a very slight force would 
 have made them roll down to the base of that ridge, which is 
 very steep on its western declivity. It is clear, therefore, that 
 the propelling power, whatever it may have been, acted 
 exclusively in a south-easterly direction. Professor Hall and 
 
CHAP. XVIII. 
 
 DOME-SHAPED ERRATIC. 
 
 359 
 
 I observed one of the green blocks, twenty-four feet long, 
 poised upon another about nineteen feet in length. The 
 largest of all on the west flank of m, or Dupey's Mount, 
 called the Alderman, is above ninety feet in diameter, 
 
 Fig. 51 
 
 Erratic dome-shaped block of compact chloritic rock (n map, 
 fig. 50), near the Eichmond Meeting-house, Berkshire, Massachusetts, 
 lat, 42 25' N. Length, fifty-two feet ; width, forty feet ; height 
 above the soil, fifteen feet. 
 
 Fig. 52 
 
 Section showing position of the block, fig. 51. 
 
 a The large block. Fig. 51 and n map, p. 357. 
 
 b Fragment detached from the same. 
 
 c Unstratified drift with boulders. 
 
 d Silurian limestone in inclined stratification. 
 
 and nearly three hundred feet in circumference. We counted 
 at some points between forty and fifty blocks visible at once, 
 the smallest of them larger than a camel. 
 
360 CHARACTER OF THE DRIFT. CHAP. xvm. 
 
 The annexed drawing represents one of the best known of 
 train No. 6, being that marked n on the map, p. 357. Ac 
 cording to our measurement it is fifty-two feet long by forty 
 in width, its height above the drift in which it is partially 
 buried being fifteen feet. At the distance of several yards 
 occurs a smaller block, three or four feet in height, twenty 
 feet long, and fourteen broad, composed of the same compact 
 chloritic rock, and evidently a detached fragment from the 
 bigger mass, to the lower and angular part of which it would 
 fit on exactly. This erratic n has a regularly rounded top, 
 worn and smoothed like the roches moutonnees before men 
 tioned, but no part of the attrition can have occurred since it 
 left its parent rock, the angles of the lower portion being 
 quite sharp and unblunted. 
 
 From railway cuttings through the drift of the neighbour 
 hood, and other artificial excavations, we may infer that the 
 position of the block n, if seen in a vertical section, would be 
 as represented in fig. 52. The deposit c in that section, 
 p. 359, consists of sand, mud, gravel, and stones, for the most 
 part unstratified, resembling the till or boulder clay of 
 Europe. It varies in thickness from ten to fifty feet, being 
 of greater depth in the valleys. The uppermost portion is 
 occasionally, though rarely, stratified. Some few of the im 
 bedded stones have flattened, polished, striated, and furrowed 
 sides. They consist invariably, like the seven trains above 
 mentioned, of kinds of rock confined to the region lying to 
 the NW., none of them having come from any other quarter. 
 Whenever the surface of the underlying rock has been exposed 
 by the removal of the superficial detritus, a polished and 
 furrowed surface is seen, like that underneath a glacier, the 
 direction of the furrows being from NW. to SE., or corre 
 sponding to the course of the large erratics. 
 
 As all the blocks, instead of being dispersed from a centre, 
 have been carried in one direction, and across the ridges A, B, 
 
CHAP. xvin. FLOATING OF BOULDEES ON ICE. 361 
 
 c, and the intervening valleys, the hypothesis of glaciers is 
 out of the question. I conceive, therefore, that the erratics 
 were conveyed to the places they now occupy by coast ice, 
 when the country was submerged beneath the waters of a 
 sea cooled by icebergs coming annually from arctic regions. 
 
 Fig. 53 
 
 N.W. 
 Canaan 
 
 d, e Masses of floating ice carrying fragments of rock. 
 
 Suppose the highest peaks of the ridges A, B, c, in the an 
 nexed diagram, to be alone above water, forming islands, and 
 d e to be masses of floating ice, which drifted across the Canaan 
 and Eichmond valleys at a time when they were marine 
 channels, separating islands, or rather chains of islands, having 
 a NNE. and SSW. direction. A fragment of ice such as 
 f/, freighted with a block from A, might run aground, and add 
 to the heap of erratics at the NW. base of the island (now 
 ridge) B, or, passing through a sound between B and the next 
 island of the same group, might float on till it reached the 
 channel between B and c. Year after year two such exposed 
 cliffs in the Canaan range as d and e of the map, fig. 50, 
 p. 357, undermined by the waves, might serve as the points of 
 departure of blocks, composing the trains Nos. 5 and 6. It 
 may be objected that oceanic currents could not always have 
 had the same direction ; this may be true, but during a short 
 season of the year when the ice was breaking up the prevailing 
 current may have always run SE. 
 
 If it be asked why the blocks of each train are not 
 more scattered, especially when far from their source, it may 
 be observed, that after passing through sounds separating 
 islands, they issued again from a new and narrow starting 
 
362 DISTRIBUTION AND SIZE OF ERRATICS. CHAP. xviu. 
 
 point ; moreover, we must not exaggerate the regularity of 
 the trains, as their width is sometimes twice as great in one 
 place as in another ; and No. 6 sends off a branch at p 9 which 
 joins No. 5. There are also stragglers, or large blocks, 
 here and there in the spaces between the two trains. As to 
 the distance to which any given block would be carried, that 
 must have depended on a variety of circumstances ; such as 
 the strength of the current, t the direction of the wind, the 
 weight of the block, or the quantity and draught of the ice 
 attached to it. The smaller fragments would, on the whole, 
 have the best chance of going farthest ; because, in the first 
 place, they were more numerous, and then, being lighter, they 
 required less ice to float them, and would not ground so 
 readily on shoals, or, if stranded, would be more easily started 
 again on their travels. Many of the blocks, which at first 
 sight seem to consist of single masses, are found, when ex 
 amined, to be made up of two, three, or more pieces, divided 
 by natural joints. In case of a second removal by ice, one 
 or more portions would become detached and be drifted to 
 different points further on. Whenever this happened, the 
 original size would be lessened, and the angularity of the 
 block previously worn by the breakers would be restored, and 
 this tendency to split may explain why some of the far-trans 
 ported fragments remain very angular. 
 
 These various considerations may also account for the fact 
 that the average size of the blocks of all the seven trains 
 laid down on the plan, fig. 50, lessens sensibly in proportion 
 as we recede from the principal points of departure of par 
 ticular kinds of erratics, yet not with any regularity, a huge 
 block now and then recurring when the rest of the train 
 consists of smaller ones. 
 
 All geologists acquainted with the district now under con 
 sideration are agreed that the mountain ranges A, B, and c, as 
 well as the adjoining valleys, had assumed their actual form 
 
CHAP. xvin. TRANSPORTING POWER OF COAST-ICE. 3G3 
 
 and position before the drift and erratics accumulated on and 
 in them, and before the surface of the fixed rocks was polished 
 and furrowed. I have the less hesitation in ascribing the 
 transporting power to coast-ice, because I saw, in 1852, an 
 angular block of sandstone, eight feet in diameter, which had 
 been brought down several miles by ice, only three years before, 
 to the mouth of the Petitcodiac estuary, in Nova Scotia, 
 where it joins the Bay of Fundy ; and I ascertained that on 
 the shores of the same bay, at the South Joggins, in the year 
 1850, much larger blocks had been removed by coast-ice, 
 and after they had floated half a mile, had been dropped in 
 salt water by the side of a pier built for loading vessels with 
 coal, so that it was necessary at low tide to blast these huge 
 ice-borne rocks with gunpowder, in order that the vessels 
 might be able to draw up alongside the pier. These recent 
 exemplifications of the vast carrying powers of ice occurred 
 in lat. 46 N. (corresponding to that of Bordeaux), in a bay 
 never invaded by icebergs. 
 
 I may here remark that a sheet of ice of moderate thick 
 ness, if it extend over a wide area, may suffice to buoy up 
 the largest erratics which fall upon it. The size of these will 
 depend, not on the intensity of the cold, but on the manner 
 in which the rock is jointed, and the consequent dimensions 
 of the blocks into which it splits, when falling from an 
 undermined cliff. 
 
 When I first endeavoured in the ( Principles of Geology,' in 
 1830,* to explain the causes, both of the warmer and colder 
 climates, which have at former periods prevailed on the 
 globe, I referred to successive variations in the height and 
 position of the land, and its extent relatively to the sea in 
 polar and equatorial latitudes also to fluctuations in the 
 course of oceanic currents and other geographical conditions, 
 
 * 1st edit. ch. vii. ; 9th edit. ib. 
 
364 POWER OF THE GULF-STREAM CHAP. xvm. 
 
 by the united influence of which I still believe the principal 
 revolutions in the meteorological state of the atmosphere 
 at different geological periods have been brought about. The 
 Gulf Stream was particularly alluded to by me as moderating 
 the winter climate of northern Europe, and as depending for 
 its direction on temporary and accidental peculiarities, in 
 the shape of the land, especially that of the narrow Straits of 
 Bahama, which a slight modification in the earth's crust would 
 entirely alter. 
 
 Mr. Hopkins, in a valuable essay on the causes of former 
 changes of climate,* has attempted to calculate how much 
 the annual temperature of Europe would be lowered if this 
 Grulf Stream were turned in some other and new direction, 
 and estimates the amount at about six or seven degrees of 
 Fahrenheit. He also supposes that if at the same time a con 
 siderable part of northern and central Europe were submerged, 
 so that a cold current from the arctic seas should sweep over 
 it, an additional refrigeration of three or four degrees would 
 be produced. He has speculated in the same essay on the 
 effects which would be experienced in the eastern hemisphere 
 if the same mighty current of warm water, instead of 
 crossing the Atlantic, were made to run northwards from the 
 Grulf of Mexico through the region now occupied by the valley 
 of the Mississippi, and so onwards to the arctic regions. 
 
 After reflecting on what has been said in the thirteenth 
 chapter of the submergence and re-elevation of the British 
 Isles and the adjoining parts of Europe, and the rising 
 and sinking of the Alps, and the basins of some of the great 
 rivers flowing from that chain, since the commencement of the 
 glacial period, a geologist will not be disposed to object to the 
 theory above adverted to, on the score of its demanding too 
 much conversion of land into sea, or almost any amount of geo- 
 
 * Hopkins, Geological Quarterly Journal, vol. viii. p. 56, 1852. 
 
CHAP, xviii. TO AFFECT CLIMATE. 365 
 
 graphical change in post-pliocene times. But a difficulty of 
 another kind presents itself. We have seen that, during the 
 glacial period, the cold in Europe extended much farther south 
 than it does at present, and in this chapter we have demon 
 strated that in North America the cold also extended no less 
 than 10 of latitude still farther southwards than in Europe; so 
 that if a great body of heated water, instead of flowing north 
 eastward, were made to pass through what is now the centre 
 of the American continent towards the Arctic circle, it could 
 not fail to mitigate the severity of the winter's cold in pre 
 cisely those latitudes where the cold was greatest, and where 
 it has left monuments of ice-action surpassing in extent any 
 exhibited on the European side of the ocean. 
 
 In the actual state of the globe, the isothermal lines, or 
 rather the lines of equal winter temperature, when traced 
 eastward from Europe to North America, bend 10 south, 
 there being a marked excess of winter cold in corresponding 
 latitudes west of the Atlantic. During the glacial period, 
 viewing it as a whole, we behold signs of a precisely similar 
 deflection of these same isochimenal lines when followed from 
 east to west ; so that if, in the hope of accounting for the 
 former severity of glacial action in Europe, we suppose the 
 absence of the Grulf Stream and imagine a current of equi 
 valent magnitude to have flowed due north from the Grulf of 
 Mexico, we introduce, as we have just hinted, a source of heat 
 into precisely that part of the continent where the extreme 
 conditions of refrigeration are most manifest. Viewed in this 
 light, the hypothesis in question would render the glacial 
 phenomena described in the present chapter more perplexing 
 and anomalous than ever. But here another question arises, 
 whether the eras at which the maximum of cold was attained 
 on the opposite sides of the Atlantic were really contem 
 poraneous? We have now discovered not only that the 
 glacial period was of vast duration, but that it passed through 
 
366 MERIDIONAL ZONES CHAP. xvm. 
 
 various phases and oscillations of temperature; so that, 
 although the chief polishing and furrowing of the rocks and 
 transportation of erratics in Europe and North America may 
 have taken place contemporaneously, according to the ordinary 
 language of geology, or when the same testacea and the same 
 post-pliocene assemblage of mammalia flourished, yet the 
 extreme development of cold on the opposite sides of the 
 ocean may not have been strictly simultaneous, but, on the 
 contrary, the one may have preceded or followed the other by 
 a thousand or more than a thousand centuries. 
 
 It is probable that the greatest refrigeration of Norway, 
 Sweden, Scotland, Wales, the Vosges, and the Alps coin 
 cided very nearly in time ; but when the Scandinavian and 
 Scotch mountains were encrusted with a general covering of 
 ice, similar to that now enveloping Greenland, this last country 
 may not have been in nearly so glacial a condition as now, 
 just as we find that the old icy crust and great glaciers, 
 which have left their mark on the mountains of Norway and 
 Sweden, have now disappeared, precisely at a time when the 
 accumulation of ice in Greenland is so excessive. In other 
 words, we see that in the present state of the northern hemi 
 sphere, at the distance of about fifteen hundred miles, two 
 meridional zones, enjoying very different conditions of tem 
 perature, may co-exist, and we are, therefore, at liberty to 
 imagine some former alternations of colder and milder 
 climates on the opposite sides of the ocean throughout the 
 post-pliocene era of a compensating kind, the cold on the one 
 side balancing the milder temperature on the other. By 
 assuming such a succession of events we can more easily 
 explain why there has not been a greater extermination of 
 species, both terrestrial and aquatic, in polar and temperate 
 regions, during the glacial epoch, and why so many species 
 are common to pre-glacial and post-glacial times. 
 
 The numerous plants which are common to the temperate 
 
CHAP. xvm. OF COLDER AND MILDER CLIMATE. 367 
 
 zones N. and S. of the equator have been referred by Mr. 
 Darwin and Dr. Hooker to migrations, which took place along 
 mountain chains running from N. to S. during some of the 
 colder phases of the glacial epoch.* Such an hypothesis 
 enables us to dispense with the doctrine that the same species 
 ever originated independently in twodistinct and distant are as ; 
 and it becomes more feasible if we admit the doctrine of the 
 co-existence of meridional belts of warmer and colder climate, 
 instead of the simultaneous prevalence of extreme cold both 
 in the eastern and western hemisphere. It also seems neces 
 sary, as colder currents of water always flow to lower lati 
 tudes, while warmer ones are running towards polar regions, 
 that some such compensation should take place, and that 
 an increase of cold in one region must to a certain extent 
 be balanced by a mitigation of temperature elsewhere. 
 
 Sir John F. Herschel, in his recent work on e Physical Geo 
 graphy,' when speaking of the open sea which is caused in 
 part of the polar regions by the escape of ice through Behring's 
 Straits, and the flow of warmer water northwards through the 
 same channel, observes that these straits, by which the conti 
 nents of Asia and North America are now parted, ' are ooly 
 thirty miles broad where narrowest, and only twenty-five 
 fathoms in their greatest depth.' But ' this narrow channel,' 
 he adds, 'is yet important in the economy of nature, inasmuch 
 as it allows a portion of the circulating water from a warmer 
 region to find its way into the polar basin, aiding thereby not 
 only to mitigate the extreme rigour of the polar cold, but to 
 prevent in all probability a continual accretion of ice, which 
 else might rise to a mountainous height.' f 
 
 Behring's Straits, here alluded to, happen to agree singularly 
 in width and depth with the Straits of Dover, the difference 
 
 * Darwin, Origin of Species, ch. xi. p. 365 ; Hooker, Flora of Australia, 
 Introduction, p. 18. 
 
 f Herschel' s Physical Geography, p. 41, 1861. 
 
368 CLIMATE AFFECTED BY CURRENTS. CHAP. xvm. 
 
 in depth not being more than three or four feet ; so that at 
 the rate of upheaval, which is now going on in many parts of 
 Scandinavia, of two and a half feet in a century, such straits 
 might be closed in 3000 years, and a vast accumulation of ice 
 to the northward commence forthwith. 
 
 But, on the other hand, although such an accumulation 
 might spread its refrigerating influence for many miles south 
 wards beyond the new barrier, the warm current which now 
 penetrates through the straits, and which at other times is 
 chilled by floating ice issuing from them, would, when totally 
 excluded from all communication with the icy sea, have its 
 temperature raised and its course altered, so that the climate 
 of some other area must immediately begin to improve. 
 
 The scope and limits of this volume forbid my pursuing 
 these speculations and reasonings farther ; but I trust I 
 have said enough to show that the monuments of the glacial 
 period, when more thoroughly investigated, will do much 
 towards expanding our views as to the antiquity of the fauna 
 and flora now contemporary with man, and will therefore 
 enable us the better to determine the time at which man 
 began in the northern hemisphere to form part of the existing 
 fauna. 
 
CHAP. xix. RECAPITULATION OP RESULTS. 369 
 
 CHAPTEK XIX. 
 
 RECAPITULATION OF GEOLOGICAL PROOFS OF MAN'S ANTIQUITY. 
 
 RECAPITULATION OF RESULTS ARRIVED AT IN THE EARLIER CHAPTERS 
 
 AGES OF STONE AND BRONZE DANISH PEAT AND KITCHEN-MIDDENS 
 
 SWISS LAKE-DWELLINGS LOCAL CHANGES IN VEGETATION AND IN 
 
 THE WILD AND DOMESTICATED ANIMALS AND IN PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY 
 COEVAL WITH THE AGE OF BRONZE AND THE LATER STONE PERIOD 
 ESTIMATES OF THE POSITIVE DATE OF SOME DEPOSITS OF THE LATER 
 
 STONE PERIOD ANCIENT DIVISION OF THE AGE OF STONE OF ST. 
 
 ACHEUL AND AURIGNAC MIGRATIONS OF MAN IN THAT PERIOD FROM 
 
 THE CONTINENT TO ENGLAND IN POST-GLACIAL TIMES SLOW RATE 
 OF PROGRESS IN BARBAROUS AGES DOCTRINE OF THE SUPERIOR IN 
 TELLIGENCE AND ENDOWMENTS OF THE ORIGINAL STOCK OF MANKIND 
 
 CONSIDERED OPINIONS OF THE GREEKS AND ROMANS, AND THEIR 
 
 COINCIDENCE WITH THOSE OF THE MODERN PROGRESSIONIST EARLY 
 
 EGYPTIAN CIVILISATION AND ITS DATE IN COMPARISON WITH THAT OF 
 THE FIRST AND SECOND STONE PERIODS. 
 
 THE ages of stone and bronze, so called by archaeologists, 
 were spoken of in the earlier chapters of this work. 
 That of bronze has been traced back to times anterior to the 
 Roman occupation of Helvetia, Gaul, and other countries north 
 of the Alps. When weapons of that mixed metal were in use, 
 a somewhat uniform civilisation seems to have prevailed over 
 a wide extent of central and northern Europe, and the long 
 duration of such a state of things in Denmark and Switzer 
 land is shown by the gradual improvement which took place 
 in the useful and ornamental arts. Such progress is attested 
 by the increasing variety of the forms, and the more perfect 
 finish and tasteful decoration of the tools and utensils ob 
 tained from the more modern deposits of the bronze age, those 
 
 B B 
 
370 RECAPITULATION OF RESULTS. CHAP. xix. 
 
 from the upper layers of peat, for example, as compared to those 
 found in the lower ones. The great number also of the Swiss 
 lake-dwellings of the bronze age, (those already discovered 
 amounting to about seventy,) and the large population which 
 some of them were capable of containing, afford indication 
 of a considerable lapse of time, as does the thickness of the 
 stratum of mud in which, in some of the lakes, the works of 
 art are entombed. The unequal antiquity, also, of the 
 settlements, is occasionally attested by the different degrees 
 of decay which the wooden stakes or piles have undergone, 
 some of them projecting more above the mud than others, 
 while all the piles of the antecedent age of stone have 
 rotted away quite down to the level of the mud, such part 
 of them only as was originally driven into the bed of the 
 lake having escaped decomposition.* 
 
 Among the monuments of the stone period, which im 
 mediately preceded that of bronze, the polished hatchets 
 called celts are abundant, and were in very general use in 
 Europe before metallic tools were introduced. We learn, 
 from the Danish peat and shell-mounds, and from the older 
 Swiss lake-settlements, that the first inhabitants were hunters, 
 who fed almost entirely on game, but their food in after 
 ages consisted more and more of tamed animals, and, still 
 later, a more complete change to a pastoral state took place, 
 accompanied, as population increased, by the cultivation of 
 some cereals (p. 21). 
 
 Both the shells and quadrupeds, belonging to the ages of 
 stone and bronze, consist exclusively of species now living 
 in Europe, the fauna being the same as that which flourished 
 in G-aul at the time when it was conquered by Julius Csesar, 
 even the Bos primigenius, the only animal of which the 
 wild type is lost, being still represented, according to Cuvier, 
 
 * Troy on, Habitations lacustres. Lausanne, 1860. 
 
CHAP. xix. AGES OF STONE AND BRONZE. 371 
 
 Bell, and Kutimeyer, by one of the domesticated races of 
 cattle now in Europe. (See p. 25.) 
 
 These monuments, therefore, whether of stone or bronze, 
 belong to what I have termed geologically the Kecent Period, 
 the definition of which some may think rather too dependent 
 on negative evidence, or on the non-discovery hitherto of 
 extinct mammalia, such as the mammoth, which may one 
 day turn up in a fossil state in some of the oldest peaty 
 deposits, as, indeed, it is already said to have done at some 
 spots, though I have failed, as yet, to obtain authentic 
 evidence of the fact.* No doubt some such exceptional cases 
 may be met with in the course of future investigations, for 
 we are still imperfectly acquainted with the entire fauna of 
 the age of stone in Denmark, as we may infer from an 
 opinion expressed by Steenstrup, that some of the instru 
 ments exhumed by antiquaries from the Danish peat are 
 made of the bones and horns of the elk and reindeer. Yet 
 no skeleton or uncut bone of either of those species has 
 hitherto been observed in the same peat. 
 
 Nevertheless, the examination made by naturalists of the 
 various Danish and Swiss deposits of the recent period has 
 been so searching, that the finding in them of a stray 
 elephant or rhinoceros, should it ever occur, would prove 
 little more than that some few individuals lingered on, when 
 the species was on the verge of extinction, and such rare 
 exceptions would not render the classification above pro 
 posed inappropriate. 
 
 At the time when many wild quadrupeds and birds were 
 growing scarce, and some of them becoming locally ex 
 tirpated in Denmark, great changes were taking place in the 
 
 * A molar of E. primigenius, in a submerged mass of vegetable matter 
 
 very fresh state, in the museum at at the extremity of the valley in which 
 
 Torquay, believed to have been washed Tor Abbey stands, is the best case I 
 
 up by the waves of the sea out of the have seen. 
 
 B B 2 
 
372 DANISH PEAT AND ( KITCHEN-MIDDENS.' CHAP, xix, 
 
 vegetation. The pine, or Scotch fir, buried in the oldest 
 peat, gave place at length to the oak, and the oak, after 
 flourishing for ages, yielded, in its turn, to the beech, the 
 periods when these three forest trees predominated in suc 
 cession tallying pretty nearly with the ages of stone, bronze, 
 and iron in Denmark (p. 16). In the same country, also, 
 during the stone period, various fluctuations, as we have 
 seen, occurred in physical geography. Thus, on the ocean 
 side of certain islands, the old refuse-heaps, or 'kitchen- 
 middens,' were destroyed by the waves, the cliffs having 
 wasted away, while, on the side of the Baltic, where the sea 
 was making no encroachment, or where the land was some 
 times gaining on the sea, such mounds remained uninjured. 
 It was also shown, that the oyster, which supplied food to 
 the primitive people, attained its full size in parts of the 
 Baltic where it cannot now exist, owing to a want of saltness 
 in the water, and that certain marine univalves and bivalves, 
 such as the common periwinkle, mussel, and cockle, of which 
 the castaway shells are found in the mounds, attained in the 
 olden time their full dimensions, like the oysters, whereas 
 the same species, though they still live on the coast of the 
 inland sea adjoining the mounds, are dwarfed, and never half 
 their natural size, the water being rendered too fresh for them 
 by the influx of so many rivers. 
 
 As for several calculations, in which certain archaeologists 
 and geologists of merit have indulged, in the hope of arriving 
 at some positive dates, or exact estimates of the minimum of 
 time required for the changes in physical geography, or in 
 the range and numerical preponderance of certain species of 
 animals, or the advance in human civilisation in the Eecent 
 Period, or during the ages of stone, bronze, and iron, 
 whether the computation related to the growth of peat, or 
 to the conversion of water into land, since some lake settle 
 ments were founded, or the various depths at which, in the 
 
CHAP. xix. SWISS LAKE-DWELLINGS. 373 
 
 delta of the Tiniere, vegetable soils have been met with, 
 containing human bones and works of art of the Roman, 
 the bronze, and the stone periods, they can only be con 
 sidered, as yet, as being tentative, and, if a rough approxi 
 mation to the truth has been made, it is all that can be 
 expected. (See p. 27 et seq.) They have led to the assign 
 ment of 4,000 and 7,000 years before our time as the lowest 
 antiquity which can be ascribed to certain events and monu 
 ments; but much collateral evidence will be required to 
 confirm these estimates, and to decide whether the number 
 of centuries has been under or over-rated. 
 
 Between the newer or recent division of the stone period 
 and the older division, which has been called the Post -pliocene, 
 there was evidently a vast interval of time a gap in the 
 history of the past, into which many monuments of inter 
 mediate date will one day have to be intercalated. Of this 
 kind are those caves in the south of France, in which M. 
 Lartet has lately found bones of the reindeer, associated with 
 works of art somewhat more advanced in style than those of 
 St. Acheul or of Aurignac (p. 190). In the valley of the 
 Somme, we have seen that peat exists of great thickness, 
 containing in its upper layers Roman and Celtic memo 
 rials, the whole of which has been of slow growth, in basins 
 or depressions conforming to the present contour and drain 
 age levels of the country, and long posterior in date to older 
 gravels, containing bones of the mammoth and a large number 
 of flint implements of a very rude and antique type. Some 
 of those gravels were accumulated in the channels of rivers 
 which flowed at higher levels, by a hundred feet, than the 
 present streams, and before the valley had attained its present 
 depth and form. No intermixture has been observed in 
 those ancient river beds of any polished Celtic weapons/ or 
 other relics of the more modern times, or of the second or 
 6 Recent ' stone period, nor any interstratified peat ; and the 
 
374 LOCAL CHANGES IN VEGETATION, ETC. CHAP. xix. 
 
 climate of those Post-pliocene ages, when Man was a 
 denizen of the north-west of France and of southern and cen 
 tral England, appears to have been much more severe in 
 winter than it is now in the same region, though far less cold 
 than in the glacial period which immediately preceded. 
 
 We may presume that the time demanded for the gradual 
 dying out or extirpation of a large number of wild beasts 
 which figure in the Post-pliocene strata, and are missing in 
 the Eecent fauna, was of protracted duration, for we know 
 how tedious a task it is in our own times, even with the aid 
 of fire-arms, to exterminate a noxious quadruped, a wolf, for 
 example, in any region comprising within it an extensive 
 forest or a mountain chain. In many villages in the north 
 of Bengal, the tiger still occasionally carries off its human 
 victims, and the abandonment of late years by the natives of 
 a part of the Sunderbunds or lower delta of the Granges, 
 which they once peopled, is attributed chiefly to the ravages 
 of the tiger. It is probable that causes more general and 
 powerful than the agency of Man, alterations in climate, 
 variations in the range of many species of animals, vertebrate 
 and invertebrate, and of plants, geographical changes in the 
 height, depth, and extent of land and sea, some or all of 
 these combined, have given rise, in a vast series of years, to 
 the annihilation, not only of many large mammalia, but to 
 the disappearance of the Cyrena fluminalis, once common in 
 the rivers of Europe, and to the different range or relative 
 abundance of other shells which we find in the European 
 drifts. 
 
 That the growing power of Man may have lent its aid as the 
 destroying cause of many Post-pliocene species, must, however, 
 be granted ; yet, before the introduction of fire-arms, or even 
 the use of improved weapons of stone, it seems more wonder 
 ful that the aborigines were able to hold their own against 
 the cave-lion, hyaena, and wild bull, and to cope with such 
 
CHAP. xix. LOCAL CHANGES IN PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 375 
 
 enemies, than that they failed to bring about their speedy 
 extinction. 
 
 It is already clear that Man was contemporary in Europe 
 with two species of elephant, E.primigenius and E. antiquus, 
 two, also, of rhinoceros, R. tichorhinus and R. hemitcecus 
 (Falc.), at least one species of hippopotamus, the cave-bear, 
 cave-lion, and cave-hyaena, various bovine, equine, and cer 
 vine animals now extinct, and many smaller carnivora, 
 rodentia, and insectivora. While these were slowly passing 
 away, the musk buffalo, reindeer, and other arctic species, 
 which have survived to our times, were retreating northwards, 
 from the valleys of the Thames and Seine, to their present 
 more arctic haunts. 
 
 The human skeletons of the Belgian caverns of times co 
 eval with the mammoth and other extinct mammalia, do not 
 betray any signs of a marked departure in their structure, 
 whether of skull or limb, from the modern standard of certain 
 living races of the human family. As to the remarkable 
 Neanderthal skeleton (Ch. V. p. 75), it is at present too iso 
 lated and exceptional, and its age too uncertain, to warrant 
 us in relying on its abnormal and ape-like characters, as 
 bearing on the question whether the farther back we 
 trace Man into the past, the more we shall find him approach 
 in bodily conformation to those species of the anthropoid 
 quadrumana which are most akin to him in structure. 
 
 In the descriptions* already given of the geographical 
 changes which the British Isles have undergone since the 
 commencement of the glacial period (as illustrated by several 
 maps, pp. 276-279), it has been shown that there must have 
 been a free communication by land between the Continent 
 and these islands, and between the several islands themselves, 
 within the Post-pliocene epoch, in order to account for the 
 Germanic fauna and flora having migrated into every part of 
 the area, as well as for the Scandinavian plants and animals 
 
376 MIGRATIONS OF MAN FROM THE CONTINENT. CHAP. xix. 
 
 to have retreated into the higher mountains. During some 
 part of the Post-pliocene ages, the large pachyderms and ac 
 companying beasts of prey, now extinct, wandered from the 
 Continent to England ; but whether the junction of France 
 and any part of the British Isles was as late as the period of 
 the gravels of St. Acheul, or the era of those engulfed rivers 
 which, in the basin of the Meuse, near Liege, swept into many 
 a rent and cavern the bones of Man and of the mammoth 
 and cave-bear, is still doubtful. There have been vast geo 
 graphical revolutions since the times alluded to, and oscilla 
 tions of land, during which the English Channel, which can 
 be shown b} T the Pagham erratics, and the old Brighton 
 beach (p. 280), to be of very ancient origin, may have been 
 more than once laid dry and again submerged since it ori 
 ginated. During some one of these phases, Man may have 
 crossed over, whether by land or in canoes, or even on the 
 ice of a frozen sea (as Mr. Prestwich has hinted), for the 
 winters of the period of the higher level "gravels of the valley 
 of the Somme were intensely cold. 
 
 The primitive people, who coexisted with the elephant and 
 rhinoceros in the valley of the Ouse at Bedford, and who 
 made use of flint tools of the Amiens type, certainly in 
 habited part of England which had already emerged from 
 the waters of the glacial sea, and the fabricators of the flint 
 tools of Hoxne, in Suffolk, were also, as we have seen, post 
 glacial. We may likewise presume, that the people of post- 
 pliocene date, who have left their memorials in the valley of 
 the Thames, were of corresponding antiquity, posterior to the 
 boulder clay, but anterior to the time when the rivers of that 
 region had settled into their present channels. 
 
 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 similar shape (al 
 though those of oval form predominate in the newer gravels), 
 
CHAP. xix. RATE OF PROGRESS IN BARBAROUS AGES. 377 
 
 leads to the conclusion that the state of the arts in those 
 early times remained stationary for almost indefinite periods. 
 There may, however, have been different degrees of civi 
 lisation, and in the art of fabricating flint tools, of which we 
 cannot easily detect the signs in the first age of stone, and 
 some contemporary tribes may have been considerably in 
 advance of others. Those hunters, for example, who feasted 
 on the rhinoceros and buried their dead with funeral rites 
 at Aurignac, may have been less barbarous than the savages 
 of St. Acheul, as some of their weapons and utensils have 
 been thought to imply. To a European who looks down 
 from a great eminence on the products of the humble arts 
 of the aborigines of all times and countries, the knives and 
 arrows of the Red Indian of North America, the hatchets of 
 the native Australian, the tools found in the ancient Swiss 
 lake-dwellings, or those of the Danish kitchen-middens and 
 of St. Acheul, seem nearly all alike in rudeness, and very 
 uniform in general character. The slowness of the progress 
 of the arts of savage life is manifested by the fact, that the 
 earlier instruments of bronze were modelled on the exact plan 
 of the stone tools of the preceding age, although such shapes 
 would never have been chosen, had metals been known from 
 the first. The reluctance or incapacity of savage tribes to 
 adopt new inventions, has been shown in the East, by their 
 continuing to this day to use the same stone implements as 
 their ancestors, after that mighty empires, where the use of 
 metals in the arts was well known, had flourished for three 
 thousand years in their neighbourhood. 
 
 We see in our own times, that the rate of progress in the 
 arts and sciences proceeds in a geometrical ratio as knowledge 
 increases, and so, when we carry back our retrospect into the 
 past, we must be prepared to find the signs of retardation 
 augmenting in a like geometrical ratio ; so that the progress of 
 a thousand years at a remote period, may correspond to that of 
 
378 NOTION OF DEGENERACY CONTROVERTED. CHAP. xix. 
 
 a century in modern times, and in ages still more remote 
 Man would more and more resemble the brutes in that 
 attribute which causes one generation exactly to imitate in 
 all its ways the generation which preceded it. 
 
 The extent to which even a considerably advanced state of 
 civilisation may become fixed and stereotyped for ages, is the 
 wonder of Europeans who travel in the East. One of my 
 friends declared to me, that whenever the natives expressed 
 to him a wish ' that he might live a thousand years,' the idea 
 struck him as by no means extravagant, seeing that if he 
 were doomed to sojourn for ever among them, he could only 
 hope to exchange in ten centuries as many ideas, and to witness 
 as much progress, as he could do at home in half a century. 
 
 It has sometimes happened that one nation has been con 
 quered by another less civilised though more warlike, or that, 
 during social and political revolutions, people have retrograded 
 in knowledge. In such cases, the traditions of earlier ages, or 
 of some higher and more educated caste which has been 
 destroyed, may give rise to the notion of degeneracy from a 
 primeval state of superior intelligence, or of science super- 
 naturally communicated. But had the original stock of 
 mankind been really endowed with such superior intellectual 
 powers, and with inspired knowledge, and had possessed the 
 same improvable nature as their posterity, the point of ad 
 vancement which they would have reached ere this would 
 have been immeasurably higher. 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 
 doubt. During those ages there would have been time for 
 progress of which we can Scarcely form a conception, and 
 very different would have been the character of the works of 
 art which we should now be endeavouring to interpret, those 
 relics which we are now disinterring from the old gravel-pits 
 
CHAP. xix. OPINIONS OF tllE GREEKS AND ROMANS. 379 
 
 of St. Acheul, or from the Liege caves. In them, or in the 
 upraised bed of the Mediterranean, on the south coast of 
 Sardinia, instead of the rudest pottery or flint tools, so ir 
 regular in form as to cause the unpractised eye to doubt 
 whether they afford unmistakable evidence of design, we 
 should now be finding sculptured forms, surpassing in beauty 
 the master-pieces of Phidias or Praxiteles; lines of buried 
 railways or electric telegraphs, from which the best engineers 
 of our day might gain invaluable hints ; astronomical instru 
 ments and microscopes of more advanced construction than 
 any known in Europe, and other indications of perfection in 
 the arts and sciences, such as the nineteenth century has not 
 yet witnessed. Still farther would the triumphs of inventive 
 genius be found to have been carried, when the later deposits, 
 now assigned to the ages of bronze and iron, were formed. 
 Vainly should we be straining our imaginations to guess 
 the possible uses and meaning of such relics machines, per 
 haps, for navigating the air or exploring the depths of the 
 ocean, or for calculating arithmetical problems, beyond the 
 wants or even the conception of living mathematicians. 
 
 The opinion entertained generally by the classical writers 
 of Greece and Rome, that Man in the first stage of his ex 
 istence was but just removed from the brutes, is faithfully 
 expressed by Horace in his celebrated lines, which begin 
 
 Quum prorepserunt primis animalia terris. Sat., lib. i. 3, 99. 
 
 The picture of transmutation given in these verses, however 
 severe and contemptuous the strictures lavishly bestowed on 
 it by Christian commentators, accords singularly with the 
 train of thought which the modern doctrine of progressive 
 development has encouraged. 
 
 4 When animals,' he says, ' first crept forth from the newly 
 formed earth, a dumb and filthy herd, they fought for acorns 
 
380 EARLY EGYPTIAN CIVILISATION CHAP. xix. 
 
 and lurking-places with their nails and fists, then with clubs, 
 and at last with arms, which, taught by experience, they had 
 forged. They then invented names for things, and words 
 to express their thoughts, after which they began to desist 
 from war, to fortify cities, and enact laws.' They who in 
 later times have embraced a similar theory, have been led 
 to it by no deference to the opinions of their pagan prede 
 cessors, but rather in spite of very strong prepossessions in 
 favour of an opposite hypothesis, namely, that of the superi 
 ority of their original progenitors, of whom they believe 
 themselves to be the corrupt and degenerate descendants. 
 
 So far as they are guided by palaeontology, they arrive 
 at this result by an independent course of reasoning; but they 
 have been conducted partly to the same goal as the ancients, 
 by ethnological considerations common to both, or by re 
 flecting in what darkness the infancy of every nation is 
 enveloped, and that true history and chronology are the 
 creation, as it were, of yesterday. Thus the first Olympiad 
 is generally regarded as the earliest date on which we can 
 rely, in the past annals of mankind, only 772 years before 
 the Christian era. 
 
 When we turn from historical records to ancient monu 
 ments and inscriptions, none of them seem to claim a higher 
 antiquity than about fifteen centuries, B.C. Those now extant 
 of Borne, Etruria, Greece, Judaea, and Assyria, carry us back no 
 farther into the history of past ages than the temples, obelisks, 
 cities, tombs, and pyramids of Egypt, and the exact date of 
 these last, after they have been studied with so much patience 
 and sagacity for centuries, remains uncertain and obscure. 
 Nevertheless, by showing the advanced point which the civili 
 sation of mankind had reached in the valley of the Nile, in 
 times which were regarded by the Greeks, more than two 
 thousand years ago, as lost in the night of ages, we may form 
 some estimate of the minimum of time which a people such 
 
CHAP. xix. AND ITS DATES. 381 
 
 as the Egyptians must have required to emerge slowly from 
 primeval barbarism, and reach, long before the first Olympiad, 
 so high a degree of power and civilisation. 
 
 Sir Greorge Come wall Lewis, in his recent e Historical Sur 
 vey of the Astronomy of the Ancients,' * says, that ' taking 
 into consideration all the evidence respecting the buildings 
 and great works of Egypt extant in the time of Herodotus, we 
 may come to the conclusion that there is no sufficient ground 
 for placing them at a date anterior to the building of the 
 temple of Solomon, or 1012, B.C.' The same author has 
 reminded us that Homer, in the Iliad, speaks of ' Egyptian 
 Thebes, with its hundred gates, through each of which two 
 hundred chariots went forth to battle,' and that we may form 
 an idea of the size which the great poet intended to ascribe to 
 Thebes in Egypt, from the fact that Thebes in Bceotia was 
 supposed to have only seven gates. Homer is believed to 
 have flourished about eight centuries before the Christian 
 era. At so early a period, therefore, the magnificence of 
 Thebes had attracted the attention of the Greeks. But in 
 the opinion of Egyptologists, there were great cities of still 
 older date than Thebes ; as, for example, Memphis, which, 
 from the names of the kings on the oldest monuments now 
 extant there as compared with those in Thebes, is inferred 
 to go back to remoter times. As to the speculations of Ari 
 stotle, in his 'Meteorics' (1, 14), that Memphis was probably 
 the less ancient of the two, because the ground on which it 
 stood was nearer the Mediterranean, and would therefore, at 
 a later period, be first redeemed from a watery and marshy 
 state, this argument, if it were available, would give an 
 extremely high antiquity to both cities, seeing the small 
 progress which the delta and alluvial deposits of the Nile 
 have made in the last two or three thousand years. It is only 
 
 * London, 1862, p. 440. 
 
382 EAELY EGYPTIAN DATES CHAP. xix. 
 
 in bays like that of Menzaleh, that any great amount of new 
 land has been gained, the general advance of the delta being 
 checked by a strong current of the Mediterranean, which, 
 running from the west, sweeps eastward the sediment brought 
 down by the great river, and prevents the land from en 
 croaching farther on the sea. The slow subsidence also of 
 the land is another cause which checks the advance of the 
 delta, and the raising and desiccation of the inland country. 
 
 Aristotle remarks, that as Homer does not mention Mem 
 phis, the city either had no existence in the time of the poet, 
 or was less considerable than Thebes. 
 
 This observation is no doubt just, so far as regards the com 
 parative splendour of the two cities, the one the metropolis 
 of Upper and the other of Lower Egypt in former times. 
 But it has no bearing whatever on the question of the 
 existence of Memphis, for Thebes is only alluded to inciden 
 tally as the grandest city known to Homer. Achilles is 
 made to exclaim, 'Not though you were to offer me the 
 wealth of Egyptian Thebes, with its hundred gates,' &c. &c., 
 ' would I stir ; ' * and the allusion to Thebes in the Odyssey is 
 equally a passing one. f If a work like Strabo's ' Geography,' 
 compiled in the days of Homer, had come down to us, and 
 Thebes had been fully described without any mention being 
 made of Memphis, we might then have inferred the non- 
 existence of the latter city at that period. 
 
 Great cities, says Sir Gr. C. Lewis, and temples, and 
 pyramids may be erected during a small number of cen 
 turies, when despotic monarch s can command the services of 
 large armies in peace, and some Oriental monarchs are known 
 in historical times to have been possessed with a mania for 
 constructing huge edifices to please their own fancies. But 
 making every allowance for such occasional displays of 
 
 * Iliad, ix. 381. | Odyssey, iv. 127. 
 
CHAP. xix. COMPARED WITH THOSE OF STONE PERIODS. 383 
 
 caprice and magnificence, we cannot contemplate the average 
 size and number of the pyramids now extant (upwards of 
 forty large and small), to say nothing of the monuments and 
 inscriptions, without supposing them to have been the work 
 of a long succession of generations. Long before the time of 
 Homer, when Thebes had already attained such wealth and 
 consequence, an indigenous civilisation must have been 
 slowly matured, with its peculiar forms of worship, splendid 
 religious ceremonial, the practice of embalming the dead, a 
 peculiar style of sculpture and architecture, hieroglyphics, 
 and the custom of embanking the great river to prevent the 
 sites of towns and cities from being overflowed by the annual 
 inundation. 
 
 In the temples are found pictorial representations of 
 battles and sieges, processions in which trophies are carried 
 and prisoners led captive; and if it be true, as Sir GK C. 
 Lewis contends, that throughout the historical period the 
 Egyptians were a peaceful and never a conquering people,* 
 the wars to which these monuments would then refer must 
 be so ancient as to confer on the Egyptians far higher claims 
 to antiquity than those advanced by Bunsen and Lepsius. 
 
 Nevertheless, geologically speaking, and in reference to 
 the date of the first age of stone, these records of the valley 
 of the Nile may be called extremely modern. Wherever 
 excavations have been made into the Nile mud underlying 
 the foundations of Egyptian cities, as, for example, sixty 
 feet below the peristyle of the obelisk of Heliopolis, and 
 generally in the alluvial plains of the Nile, the bones met 
 with belong to living species of quadrupeds, such as the 
 camel, dromedary, dog, ox, and pig, without, as yet, the 
 association in any single instance of the teeth or bone of a lost 
 species. 
 
 In like manner in all the countries bordering the Medi- 
 
 * Lewis, Historical Survey. &c,, p. 351. 
 
334 EARLY EGYPTIAN DATES. CHAP. xix. 
 
 terranean, whether in Algeria, Spain, the south of France, 
 Italy, Greece, Asia Minor, Sicily, or the islands of the Medi 
 terranean generally, wherever the bones of extinct mammalia, 
 such as the elephant, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus, have been 
 found, it is not in the modern deltas of rivers or in the 
 alluvial plains, now overflowed when the waters are high, 
 that such fossil remains present themselves, but in situations 
 corresponding to the ancient gravels of the valley of the 
 Somme, in which the bones of the mammoth and the oldest 
 type of flint implements occur. 
 
 If the Egyptian monarch, therefore, who sent Hanno to 
 circumnavigate Africa, or some earlier king than he, had com 
 manded his admiral to sail past the Pillars of Hercules, and 
 then northwards as far as he could penetrate, leaving, before he 
 set out on his return, some monument to commemorate to 
 after ages the Ultima Thule of his expedition at the most 
 northern point reached by him, and if we had now discovered 
 an obelisk of granite left by him at that era on the platform of 
 St. Acheul, near Amiens, its foundations might well have 
 occupied the precise position which the Grallo-Eoman tombs 
 now hold, as shown in fig. 21 a (p. 138). If they had dug 
 deep enough to exhume some teeth of the elephant, they 
 might easily have seen that they differed from the teeth of their 
 African species, and were distinct, like many other accom 
 panying bones, from the animals then inhabiting the valley 
 of the Somme, or that of the Nile. The flint implements 
 would then have lain buried in the old gravel as now, and 
 the only geological distinction between those times and ours 
 would be a diminished thickness of peat bordering the 
 Somme, the upper layers of which would not contain, as 
 now, Koman antiquities, and some beds below, in which 
 Celtic hatchets now occur, would have been wanting; but, 
 with this slight exception, the valley would have worn the 
 same aspect as at the era when the Eomans subdued Gaul. 
 
CHAP, xx, ANTIQUITY OF EXISTING RACES OF MANKIND. 335 
 
 CHAPTEE XX. 
 
 THEORIES OF PROGRESSION AND TRANSMUTATION. 
 
 ANTIQUITY AND PERSISTENCY IN CHARACTER OF THE EXISTING RACES 
 
 OF MANKIND THEORY OF THEIR UNITY OF ORIGIN CONSIDERED 
 
 BEARING OF THE DIVERSITY OF RACES ON THE DOCTRINE OF TRANS 
 MUTATION DIFFICULTY OF DEFINING THE TERMS ' SPECIES ' AND 'RACE* 
 
 LAMARCK'S INTRODUCTION OF THE ELEMENT OF TIME INTO THE 
 DEFINITION OF A SPECIES HIS THEORY OF VARIATION AND PRO- 
 
 GRESSION OBJECTIONS TO HIS THEORY, HOW FAR ANSWERED 
 
 ARGUMENTS OF MODERN WRITERS IN FAVOUR OF PROGRESSION IN THE 
 
 ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE WORLD THE OLD LANDMARKS SUPPOSED TO 
 
 INDICATE THE FIRST APPEARANCE OF MAN, AND OF DIFFERENT 
 CLASSES OF ANIMALS, FOUND TO BE ERRONEOUS YET THE THEORY 
 OF AN ADVANCING SERIES OF ORGANIC BEINGS NOT INCONSISTENT WITH 
 
 FACTS EARLIEST KNOWN FOSSIL MAMMALIA OF LOW GRADE NO 
 
 VERTEBRATA AS YET DISCOVERED IN THE OLDEST FOSSILIFEROUS ROCKS 
 
 OBJECTIONS TO THE THEORY OF PROGRESSION CONSIDERED CAUSES 
 
 OF THE POPULARITY OF THE DOCTRINE OF PROGRESSION AS COMPARED 
 
 TO THAT OF TRANSMUTATION. 
 
 TTTHEN speaking in a former work of the distinct races of 
 i mankind,* I remarked that, ' if all the leading varie 
 ties of the human family sprang originally from a single pair,' 
 (a doctrine, to which then, as now, I could see no valid ob 
 jection,) c a much greater lapse of time was required for the 
 slow and gradual formation of such races as the Caucasian, 
 Mongolian, and Negro, than was embraced in any of the 
 popular systems of chronology.' 
 
 In confirmation of the high antiquity of two of these, I 
 referred to pictures on the walls of ancient temples in Egypt, 
 in which, a thousand years or more before the Christian era, 
 
 * Principles of Geology, 7th ed., p. 637, 1847 ; see also 9th ed., p. 660. 
 
 C C 
 
386 ANTIQUITY OF EXISTING EACES OF MANKIND. CHAP. xx. 
 
 'the Negro and Caucasian physiognomies were portrayed 
 as faithfully, and in as strong contrast, as if the likenesses of 
 these races had been taken yesterday.' In relation to the 
 same subject, I dwelt on the slight modification which the 
 Negro has undergone, after having been transported from 
 the tropics, and settled for more than two centuries in the 
 temperate climate of Virginia. I therefore concluded that, 
 ( if the various races were all descended from a single pair, we 
 must allow for a vast series of antecedent ages, in the course 
 of which the long-continued influence of external circum 
 stances gave rise to peculiarities increased in many successive 
 generations, and at length fixed by hereditary transmission.' 
 
 So long as physiologists continued to believe that man had 
 not existed on the earth above six thousand years, they 
 might, with good reason, withhold their assent from the 
 doctrine of a unity of origin of so many distinct races ; but 
 the difficulty becomes less and less, exactly in proportion as 
 we enlarge our ideas of the lapse of time during which dif 
 ferent communities may have spread slowly, and become 
 isolated, each exposed for ages to a peculiar set of conditions, 
 whether of temperature, or food, or danger, or ways of living. 
 The law of the geometrical rate of the increase of population 
 which causes it alwa , s to press hard on the means of subsist 
 ence, would ensure the migration, in various directions, of off 
 shoots from the society first formed abandoning the area where 
 they had multiplied. But when they had gradually penetrated 
 to remote regions by land or water, drifted sometimes by 
 storms and currents in canoes to an unknown shore, barriers 
 of mountains, deserts, or seas, which oppose no obstacle to 
 mutual intercourse between civilised nations, would ensure the 
 complete isolation for tens or thousands of centuries of tribes 
 in a primitive state of barbarism. 
 
 Some modern ethnologists, in accordance with the philoso 
 phers of antiquity, have assumed that men at first fed on the 
 
CHAP. XX. THEOKY OF THEIR UNITY OF ORIGIN CONSIDERED. 387 
 
 fruits of the earth, before even a stone implement or the 
 simplest form of canoe had been invented. They may, it is 
 said, have begun their career in some fertile island in the 
 tropics, where the warmth of the air was such, that no 
 clothing was needed, and where there were no wild beasts to 
 endanger their safety. But as soon as their numbers in 
 creased, they would be forced to migrate into regions less 
 secure and blest with a less genial climate. Contests would 
 soon arise for the possession of the most fertile lands, where 
 game or pasture abounded, and their energies and inventive 
 powers would be called forth, so that, at length, they would 
 make progress in the arts. 
 
 But as ethnologists have failed, as yet, to trace back the 
 history of any one race to the area where it originated, some 
 zoologists of eminence have declared their belief, that the 
 different races, whether they be three, five, twenty, or a much 
 greater number, (for on this point there is an endless diver 
 sity of opinion,*) have all been primordial creations, having 
 from the first been stamped with the characteristic features, 
 mental and bodily, by which they are now distinguished, 
 except where intermarriage has given rise to mixed or hy 
 brid races. Were we to admit, say they, a unity of origin of 
 such strongly marked varieties as the Negro and European, 
 differing as they do in colour and bodily constitution, each 
 fitted for distinct climates, and exhibiting some marked 
 peculiarities in their osteological, and even, in some details 
 of cranial and cerebral conformation, as well as in their 
 average intellectual endowments (see above, p. 91), if, in 
 spite of the fact that all these attributes have been faithfully 
 handed down unaltered for hundreds of generations, we 
 are to believe that, in the course of time, they have all 
 diverged from one common stock, how shall we resist the 
 
 * See Transactions of Ethnological Society, vol. i. 1861. 
 C c 2 
 
3S8 DIFFICULTY OF DEFINING CHAP. xx. 
 
 arguments of the transmutationist, who contends that all 
 closely allied species of animals and plants have in like 
 manner sprung from a common parentage, albeit that for 
 the last three or four thousand years they may have been 
 persistent in character ? Where are we to stop, unless we 
 make our stand at once on the independent creation of those 
 distinct human races, the history of which is better known 
 to us than that of any of the inferior animals ? 
 
 So long as Geology had not lifted up a part of the veil 
 which formerly concealed from the naturalist the history of 
 the changes which the animate creation had undergone in 
 times immediately antecedent to the Recent period, it was 
 easy to treat these questions as too transcendental, or as 
 lying too far beyond the domain* of positive science to 
 require serious discussion. But it is no longer possible to 
 restrain curiosity from attempting to pry into the relations 
 which connect the present state of the animal and vegetable 
 worlds, as well as of the various races of mankind, with the 
 state of the fauna and flora which immediately preceded. 
 
 In the very outset of the enquiry, we are met with the 
 difficulty of defining what we mean by the terms ' species ' and 
 e race ; ' and the surprise of the unlearned is usually great, 
 when they discover how wide is the difference of opinion now 
 prevailing as to the significance of words in such familiar 
 use. But, in truth, we can come to no agreement as to such 
 definitions, unless we have previously made up our minds on 
 some of the most momentous of all the enigmas with which 
 the human intellect ever attempted to grapple. 
 
 It is now thirty years since I gave an analysis in the first 
 edition of my 'Principles of Greology ' (vol. ii. 1832) of the 
 views which had been put forth by Lamarck, in the be 
 ginning of the century, on this subject. In that interval 
 the progress made in zoology and botany, both in aug 
 menting the number of known animals and plants, and in 
 

 CHAP. xx. THE TERMS ( SPECIES ' AND ( RACE.' 389 
 
 studying their physiology and geographical distribution, and, 
 above all, in examining and describing fossil species, is so 
 vast, that the additions made to our knowledge probably 
 exceed all that was previously known ; and what Lamarck then 
 foretold has come to pass; the more new forms have been 
 multiplied, the less are we able to decide what we mean by a 
 variety, and what by a species. In fact, zoologists and 
 botanists are not only more at a loss than ever how to 
 define a species, but even to determine whether it has any 
 real existence in nature, or is a mere abstraction of the 
 human intellect, some contending that it is constant within 
 certain narrow and impassable limits of variability, others 
 that it is capable of indefinite and endless modification. 
 
 Before I attempt to explain a great step, which has 
 recently been made by Mr. Darwin and his fellow-labourers 
 in this field of enquiry, I think it useful to recapitulate in 
 this place some of the leading features of Lamarck's system, 
 without attempting to adjust the claims of some of his con 
 temporaries (GreofFroy St. Hilaire in particular) to share in 
 the credit of some of his original speculations. 
 
 From the time of Linnaeus to the commencement of the 
 present century, it seemed a sufficient definition of the term 
 species to say, that c a species consisted of individuals all 
 resembling each other, and reproducing their like by genera 
 tion.' But Lamarck, after having first studied botany with 
 success, had then turned his attention to conchology, and soon 
 became aware that in the newer (or tertiary) strata of the 
 earth's crust there were a multitude of fossil species of shells, 
 some of them identical with living ones, others simply 
 varieties of the living, and which, as such, were entitled to 
 be designated, according to the ordinary rules of classifica 
 tion, by the same names. He also observed that other shells 
 were so nearly allied to living forms, that it was difficult not 
 to suspect that they had been connected by a common bond 
 
390 LAMARCK'S THEOEY CHAP. xx. 
 
 of descent. He therefore proposed that the element of 
 time should enter into the definition of a species, and that it 
 should run thus : ' A species consists of individuals all re 
 sembling each other, and reproducing their like by genera 
 tion, so long as the surrounding conditions do not undergo 
 changes sufficient to cause their habits, characters, and forms 
 to vary? He came at last to the conclusion, that none of the 
 animals and plants now existing were primordial creations, 
 but were all derived from pre-existing forms, which,' after 
 they may have gone on for indefinite ages reproducing their 
 like, had, at length, by the influence of alterations in climate 
 and in the animate world, been made to vary gradually, 
 and adapt themselves to new circumstances, some of them 
 deviating, in the course of ages, so far from their original 
 type as to have claims to be regarded as new species. 
 
 In support of these views, he referred to wild and culti 
 vated plants, and to wild and domesticated animals, pointing 
 out how their colour, form, structure, physiological attri 
 butes, and even instincts, were gradually modified by expo 
 sure to new soils and climates, new enemies, modes of 
 subsistence, arid kinds of food. 
 
 Nor did he omit to notice that the newly acquired peculi 
 arities may be inherited by the offspring for an indefinite series 
 of generations, whether they be brought about naturally, as 
 when a species, on the extreme verge of its geographical range, 
 comes into competition with new antagonists, and is subjected 
 to new physical conditions; or artificially, as when, by the 
 act of the breeder or horticulturist, peculiar varieties of form 
 or disposition are selected. 
 
 But Lamarck taught not only that species had been con 
 stantly undergoing changes from one geological period to 
 another, but that there also had been a progressive advance 
 of the organic world from the earliest to the latest times, from 
 beings of the simplest to those of more and more complex struc- 
 
CHAP. XX. OF VARIATION AND PROGRESSION. 391 
 
 ture, and from the lowest instincts up to the highest, and, 
 finally, from brute intelligence to the reasoning powers of Man. 
 The improvement in the grade of being had been slow and 
 continuous, and the human race itself was at length evolved 
 out of the most highly organised and endowed of the inferior 
 mammalia. 
 
 In order to explain how, after an indefinite lapse of ages, so 
 many of the lowest grades, of animal or plant, still abounded, 
 he imagined that the germs or rudiments of living things, 
 which he called monads, were continually coming into the 
 world, and that there were different kinds of these monads for 
 each primary division of the animal and vegetable kingdoms. 
 This last hypothesis does not seem essentially different from 
 the old doctrine of equivocal or spontaneous generation ; it 
 is wholly unsupported by any modern experiments or observa 
 tion, and therefore affords us no aid whatever in speculating 
 on the commencement of vital phenomena on the earth. 
 
 Some of the laws which govern the appearance of new 
 varieties were clearly pointed out by Lamarck. He re 
 marked, for example, that as the muscles of the arm become 
 strengthened by exercise or enfeebled by disuse, some organs 
 may in this way, in the course of time, become entirely 
 obsolete, and others previously weak become strong and 
 play a new or more leading part in the organisation of a 
 species. And so with instincts, where animals experience new 
 dangers they become more cautious and cunning, and trans 
 mit these acquired faculties to their posterity. But not 
 satisfied with such legitimate speculations, the French 
 philosopher conceived that by repeated acts of volition 
 animals might acquire new organs and attributes, and that 
 in plants, which could not exert -a will of their own, certain 
 subtle fluids or organising forces might operate so as to 
 work out analogous effects. 
 
 After commenting on these purely imaginary causes, I 
 
392 OBJECTIONS TO LAMARCK'S THEORY, CHAP. xx. 
 
 pointed out in 1832, as the two great flaws in Lamarck's 
 attempt to explain the origin of species, first, that he had 
 failed to adduce a single instance of the initiation of a new 
 organ in any species of animal or plant ; and secondly, that 
 variation, whether taking place in the course of nature or 
 assisted artificially by the breeder and horticulturist, had 
 never yet gone so far as to produce two races sufficiently 
 remote from each other in physiological constitution as to be 
 sterile when intermarried, or, if fertile, only capable of pro 
 ducing sterile hybrids, &c.* 
 
 To this objection Lamarck would, no doubt, have answered 
 that there had not been time for bringing about so great an 
 amount of variation ; for when Cuvier and some other of his 
 contemporaries appealed to the embalmed animals and plants 
 taken from Egyptian tombs, some of them 3,000 years old, 
 which had not experienced in that long period the slightest 
 modification in their specific characters, he replied that the 
 climate and soil of the valley of the Nile had not varied in the 
 interval, and that there was therefore no reason for expecting 
 that we should be able to detect any change in the fauna and 
 flora. ' But if,' he went on to say, ' the physical geography, 
 temperature, and other conditions of life, had been altered in 
 Egypt as much as we know from geology has happened in 
 other regions, some of the same animals and plants would 
 have deviated so far from their pristine types as to be 
 thought entitled to take rank as new and distinct species.' 
 
 Although I cited this answer of Lamarck, in my account 
 of his theory,f I did not, at the time, fully appreciate the 
 deep conviction which it displays of the slow manner in 
 which geological changes have taken place, and the insigni 
 ficance of thirty or forty centuries in the history of a species, 
 and that, too, at a period when very narrow views were 
 
 * Principles of Geology, 1st ed., vol. ii. ch. ii. 
 f Ibid., p. 587. 1832. 
 

 CHAP. XX. HOW FAK ANSWEBED. 393 
 
 entertained of the extent of past time by most of the ablest 
 geologists, and when great revolutions of the earth's crust, 
 and its inhabitants, were generally attributed to sudden and 
 violent catastrophes. 
 
 While, in 1832, 1 argued against Lamarck's doctrine of the 
 gradual transmutation of one species into another, I agreed 
 with him in believing that the system of changes now in 
 progress in the organic world would afford, when fully 
 understood, a complete key to the interpretation of all the 
 vicissitudes of the living creation in past ages. I contended 
 against the doctrine, then very popular, of the sudden destruc 
 tion of vast multitudes of species, and the abrupt ushering 
 into the world of new batches of plants and animals. 
 
 I endeavoured to sketch out (and it was, I believe, the first 
 systematic attempt to accomplish such a task) the laws 
 which govern the extinction of species, with a view of show 
 ing that the slow, but ceaseless variations, now in progress 
 in physical geography, together with the migration of plants 
 and animals into new regions, must, in the course of ages, 
 give rise to the occasional loss of some of them, and eventually 
 cause an entire fauna and flora to die out ; also, that we must 
 infer, from geological data, that the places thus left vacant 
 from time to time, are filled up without delay by new forms, 
 adapted to new conditions, sometimes by immigration from 
 adjoining provinces, sometimes by new creations. Among 
 the many causes of extinction enumerated by me, were the 
 power of hostile species, diminution of food, mutations in 
 climate, the conversion of land into sea, and of sea into land, 
 &c. I firmly opposed Brocchi's hypothesis, of a decline in 
 the vital energy of each species;* maintaining that there 
 was every reason to believe that the reproductive powers of 
 the last surviving representatives of a species were as 
 
 * Principles of Geology, 1st ed. ch. viii. vol. ii. ; and 9th ed. p. 668. 
 
394 FIRST APPEARANCE OF NEW SPECIES CHAP. xx. 
 
 vigorous as those of their predecessors, and that they were as 
 capable, under favourable circumstances, of repeopling the 
 earth with their kind. The manner in which some species 
 are now becoming scarce and dying out, one after the other, 
 appeared to me to favour the doctrine of the fixity of the 
 specific character, showing a want of pliancy and capability 
 of varying, which ensured their annihilation whenever changes 
 adverse to their well-being occurred ; time not being allowed 
 for such a transformation as might be conceived capable of 
 adapting them to the new circumstances, and of converting 
 them into what naturalists would call, new species.* 
 
 But while rejecting transmutation, I was equally opposed 
 to the popular theory that the creative power had diminished 
 in energy, or that it had been in abeyance ever since man had 
 entered upon the scene. That a renovating force, which had 
 been in full operation for millions of years, should cease to 
 act while the causes of extinction were still in full activity, or 
 even intensified by the accession of man's destroying power, 
 seemed to me in the highest degree improbable. The only 
 point on which I doubted was, whether the force might not 
 be intermittent instead of being, as Lamarck supposed, in 
 ceaseless operation. Might not the births of new species, like 
 the deaths of old ones, be sudden ? Might they not still es 
 cape our observation ? If the coming in of one new species, 
 and the loss of one other which had endured for ages, should 
 take place annually, still, assuming that there are a million 
 of animals and plants living on the globe, it would require, 
 I observed, a million of years to bring about a complete 
 revolution in the fauna and flora. In that case, I imagined 
 that, although the first appearance of a new form might be as 
 abrupt as the disappearance of an old one, yet naturalists 
 might never yet have witnessed the first entrance on the stage 
 
 * Laws of Extinction, Principles chap. v. to xi. inclusive ; and 9th ed. 
 of Geology, 1st ed. 1832, vol. ii. ch. xxxvii. to xlii. inclusive. 1853. 
 
CHAP. XX. IN THE ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE WOKLD. 395 
 
 of a large and conspicuous animal or plant, and as to the 
 smaller kinds, many of them may be conceived to have stolen 
 in unseen, and to have spread gradually over a wide area, like 
 species migrating into new provinces.* 
 
 It may now be useful to offer some remarks on the very 
 different reception which the twin branches of Lamarck's 
 development theory, namely, progression and transmutation, 
 have met with, and to enquire into the causes of the popu 
 larity of the one, and the great unpopularity of the other. 
 We usually test the value of a scientific hypothesis by the 
 number and variety of the phenomena of which it offers a 
 fair or plausible explanation. If transmutation, when thus 
 tested, has decidedly the advantage over progression, and yet 
 is comparatively in disfavour, we may reasonably suspect that 
 its reception is retarded, not so much by its own inherent de 
 merits, as by some apprehended consequences which it is 
 supposed to involve, and which run counter to our precon 
 ceived opinions. 
 
 Theory of Progression. 
 
 In treating of this question, I shall begin with the doctrine 
 of progression, a concise statement of which, so far as it relates 
 to the animal kingdom, was thus given twelve years ago by 
 Professor Sedgwick, in the preface to his Discourse on the 
 Studies of the University of Cambridge. 
 
 ( There are traces,' he says, 'among the old deposits of the 
 earth of an organic progression amdng the successive forms of 
 life. They are to be seen in the absence of mammalia in the 
 older, and their very rare appearance in the newer secondary 
 groups; in the diffusion of warm-blooded quadrupeds (fre 
 quently of unknown genera) in the older tertiary system, 
 and in their great abundance (and frequently of known 
 
 * Principles of Geology, 1st ed. 1832, vol. ii. ch. xi. ; and 9th ed. p. 706. 
 
396 THEORY OP PROGRESSION CHAP. xx. 
 
 genera) in the upper portions of the same series ; and lastly, 
 in the recent appearance of Man on the surface of the earth.' 
 
 6 This historical development,' continues the same author, 
 6 of the forms and functions of organic life during successive 
 epochs, seems to mark a gradual evolution of creative power, 
 manifested by a gradual ascent towards a higher type of being.' 
 4 But the elevation of the fauna of successive periods was not 
 made by transmutation, but by creative additions ; and it is 
 by watching these additions that we get some insight into 
 Nature's true historical progress, and learn that there was a 
 time when Cephalopoda were the highest types of animal life, 
 the primates of this world ; that Fishes next took the lead, 
 then Eeptiles; and that during the secondary period they were 
 anatomically raised far above any forms of the reptile class 
 now living in the world. Mammals were added next, until 
 Nature became what she now is, by the addition of Man.' * 
 
 Although in the half century which has elapsed between the 
 time of Lamarck and the publication of the above summary, 
 new discoveries have caused geologists to assign a higher an 
 tiquity both to Man and the oldest fossil mammalia, fish, and 
 reptiles than formerly, yet the generalisation, as laid down 
 by the Woodwardian Professor, still holds good in all essential 
 particulars. 
 
 The progressive theory was propounded in the following 
 terms by the late Hugh Miller in his ' Footprints of the 
 Creator.' 
 
 ( It is of itself an extraordinary fact without reference to 
 other considerations, that the order adopted by Cuvier in his 
 " Animal Kingdom," as that in which the four great classes of 
 vertebrate animals, when marshalled according to their rank 
 and standing, naturally range, should be also that in which 
 they occur in order of time. The brain, which bears an 
 
 * Professor Sedgwick's Discourse Cambridge, Preface to 5th ed. pp. xliv. 
 on the Studies of the University of cliv. ecxvi. 1850. 
 

 CHAP. xx. NOT INCONSISTENT WITH FACTS. 397 
 
 average proportion to the spinal cord of not more than t\fo 
 to one, comes first, it is the brain of the fish ; that which 
 bears to the spinal cord an average proportion of two-and-a- 
 half to one succeeded it, it is the brain of the reptile ; then 
 came the brain averaging as three to one, it is that of the 
 bird. Next in succession came the brain that averages as 
 four to one, it is that of the animal ; and last of all there 
 appeared a brain that averages as twenty-three to one, 
 reasoning, calculating Man had come upon the scene.'* 
 
 M. Agassiz, in his Essay on Classification, has devoted a 
 chapter to the * Parallelism between the Geological Succession 
 of Animals and Plants and their present relative Standing ; ' 
 in which he has expressed a decided opinion that, within the 
 limits of the orders of each great class, there is a coincidence 
 between their relative rank in organisation and the order 
 of succession of their representatives in time.f 
 
 Professor Owen, in his Palaeontology, has advanced similar 
 views, and has remarked, in regard to the vertebrata, that there 
 is much positive as well as negative evidence in support of 
 the doctrine of an advance in the scale of being, from ancient 
 to more modern geological periods. We observe, for example, 
 in the triassic, oolitic, and cretaceous strata, not only an 
 absence of placental mammalia, but the presence of in 
 numerable reptiles, some of large size, terrestrial and aquatic, 
 herbivorous and prsedaceous, fitted to perform the functions 
 now discharged by the mammalia. 
 
 The late Professor Bronn, of Heidelberg, after passing in 
 review more than 24,000 fossil animals and plants, which he 
 had classified and referred each to their geological position 
 in his ( Index Palseontologicus,' came to the conclusion that, 
 in the course of time, there had been introduced into the 
 
 * Footprints of the Creator, p. 283. tory of United States, Part I. Essay 
 Edinburgh, 1849. on Classification, p. 108. 
 
 f Contributions to Natural His- 
 
398 THEORY OF PROGRESSION CHAP. XX. 
 
 earth more and more highly organised types of animal and 
 vegetable life ; the modern species being, on the whole, more 
 specialised, i.e., having separate organs, or parts of the body, 
 to perform different functions, which, in the earlier periods 
 and in beings of simpler structure, were discharged in com 
 mon by a single part or organ. 
 
 Professor Adolphe Brongniart, in an essay published in 
 1849, on the botanical classification and geological distribu 
 tion of the genera of fossil plants,* arrives at similar results 
 as to the progress of the vegetable world from the earliest 
 periods to the present. He does not pretend to trace an 
 exact historical series from the sea-weed to the fern, or from 
 the fern again to the conifers and cycads, and lastly, from those 
 families to the palms and oaks, but he, nevertheless, points 
 out that the cryptogamic forms, especially the acrogens, pre 
 dominate among the fossils of the primary formations, the 
 carboniferous especially, while the gymnosperms or coniferous 
 and cycadeous plants abound in all the strata, from the Trias 
 to the Wealden inclusive ; and lastly, the more highly deve 
 loped angiosperms, both monocotyledonous and dicotyledo 
 nous, do not become abundant until the tertiary period. It 
 is a remarkable fact, as he justly observes, that the exogens, 
 which comprise four-fifths of living plants, a division to which 
 all our native European trees, except the Conifers, belong, 
 and which embrace all the Composite, LeguminosaB, Um- 
 belliferas, Cruciferaa, Heaths, and so many other families, are 
 wholly unrepresented by any fossils hitherto discovered in the 
 primary and .secondary formations from the Silurian to the 
 oolitic inclusive. It is not till we arrive at the cretaceous 
 period that they begin to appear, sparingly at first, and only 
 playing a conspicuous part, together with the palms and other 
 endogens, in the tertiary epoch. 
 
 * Tableau des Genres de Vegetaux fossiles, &c. Dictionnaire Universel 
 d'Histoire Naturelle. Paris, 1849. 
 
CHAP. xx. NOT INCONSISTENT WITH FACTS. 399 
 
 When commenting on the eagerness with which the doc 
 trine of progression was embraced from the close of the last 
 century to the time when I first attempted, in 1830, to give 
 some account of the prevailing theories in geology, I observed, 
 that far too much reliance was commonly placed on the received 
 dates of the first appearances of certain orders or classes of 
 animals or plants, such dates being determined by the age of 
 the stratum in which we then happened to have discovered 
 the earliest memorials of such types. At that time (1830), 
 it was taken for granted that Man had not coexisted with the 
 mammoth and other extinct mammalia, yet now that we 
 have traced back the signs of his existence to the Post-pliocene 
 era, and may anticipate the finding of his remains on some 
 future day in the Pliocene period, the theory of progression 
 is not shaken ; for we cannot expect to meet with human 
 bones in the Miocene formations, where all the species and 
 nearly all the genera of mammalia belong to types widely 
 differing from those now living ; and had some other rational 
 being, representing man, then flourished, some signs of his 
 existence could hardly have escaped unnoticed, in the shape 
 of implements of stone or metal, more frequent and more 
 durable than the osseous remains of any of the mammalia. 
 
 In the beginning of this century it was one of the 
 canons of the popular geological creed, that the first warm 
 blooded quadrupeds which had inhabited this planet were 
 those derived from the Eocene gypsum of Montmartre in the 
 suburbs of Paris, almost all of which Cuvier had shown to 
 belong to extinct genera. This dogma continued in force for 
 more than a quarter of a century, in spite of the discovery in 
 1818 of a marsupial quadruped in the Stonesfield strata, a 
 member of the lower oolite, near Oxford. Some disputed the 
 authority of Cuvier himself, as to the mammalian character of 
 the fossil ; others, the accuracy of those who had assigned to it 
 so ancient a place in the chronological series of rocks. In 
 
400 EARLIEST KNOWN FOSSIL MAMMALIA CHAP. xx. 
 
 1832 I pointed out that the occurrence of this single fossil in 
 the oolite was ( fatal to the theory of successive development,' 
 as then propounded.* Since that period great additions have 
 been made to our knowledge of the existence of land quad 
 rupeds in the olden times. We have ascertained that, in 
 Eocene strata older than the gypsum of Paris, no less than 
 four distinct sets of placental mammalia have flourished; 
 namely, first, those of the Headon series in the Isle of Wight, 
 from which fourteen species have been procured ; secondly, 
 those of the antecedent Bagshot and Bracklesham beds, which 
 have yielded, together with the contemporaneous ' calcaire 
 grossier ' of Paris, twenty species ; thirdly, the still older beds 
 of Kyson, near Ipswich, and those of Herne Bay, at the mouth 
 of the Thames, in which seven species have been found ; and 
 fourthly, the plastic clay or lignite formation, which has sup 
 plied ten species.| 
 
 We can scarcely doubt that we should already have traced 
 back the evidence of this class of fossils much farther had not 
 our enquiries been arrested, first, by the vast gap between 
 the tertiary and secondary formations, and then by the 
 marine nature of the cretaceous rocks. 
 
 The mammalia next in antiquity, of which we have any 
 cognisance, are those of the upper oolite of Purbeck, dis 
 covered between the years 1854 and 1857, and comprising 
 no less than fourteen species, referable to eight or nine 
 genera ; one of them, Plagiaulax, considered by Dr. Falconer 
 to have been a herbivorous marsupial. The whole assem 
 blage appear, from the joint observations of Professor Owen 
 and Dr. Falconer, to indicate a low grade of quadruped, pro 
 bably of the marsupial type. They were, for the most part, 
 diminutive, the two largest not much exceeding our common 
 hedgehog and polecat in size. 
 
 * Principles of Geology, 2nd ed. f Lyell's Supplement to 5th ed. of 
 
 i. 173. Elements. 1857. 
 
CHAP. xx. OF LOW GRADE. 401 
 
 Next anterior in age are the mammalia of the Lower Oolite 
 of Stonesfield, of which four species are known, also very 
 small, and probably marsupial, with one exception, the 
 Stereognathus ooliticus, which, according to Professor Owen's 
 conjecture, may have been a hoofed quadruped and pla- 
 cental, though, as we have only half of the lower jaw with 
 teeth, and the molars are unlike any living type, such an 
 opinion is, of course, hazarded with due caution. 
 
 Still older than the above are some fossil quadrupeds of 
 small size, found in the Upper Trias of Stuttgart in Ger 
 many, and more lately by Mr. C. Moore in beds of corre 
 sponding age near Bristol, which are also of a very low grade, 
 like the living myrmecobius of Australia. Beyond this limit 
 our knowledge of the highest class of vertebrata does not as yet 
 extend into the past, but the frequent shifting back of the old 
 land- marks, nearly all of them once supposed in their turn to 
 indicate the date of the first appearance of warm-blooded 
 quadrupeds on this planet, should serve as a warning to us 
 not to consider the goal at present reached by palaeontology 
 as one beyond which they who come after us are never 
 destined to pass. 
 
 On the other hand, it may be truly said, in favour of pro 
 gression, that, after all these discoveries, the doctrine is not 
 gainsaid, for the less advanced marsupials precede the more 
 perfect placenta! mammalia in the order of their appear 
 ance on the earth. 
 
 If the three localities where the most ancient mammalia 
 have been found, Purbeck, Stonesfield, and Stuttgart had 
 belonged all of them to formations of the same age, we 
 might well have imagined so limited an area to have been 
 peopled exclusively with pouched quadrupeds, just as Aus 
 tralia now is ; while other parts of the globe were inhabited 
 by placentals, for Australia now supports one hundred and 
 sixty species of marsupials, while the rest of the continents 
 
 D D 
 
402 RETROGRADE MOVEMENT OF REPTILIA. CHAP. xx. 
 
 and islands are tenanted by about seventeen hundred species 
 of mammalia, of which only forty-six are marsupial, namely, 
 the opossums of North and South America. But the great 
 difference of age of the strata in each of these three localities 
 seems to indicate the predominance throughout a vast lapse 
 of time, (from the era of the Upper Trias to that of the 
 Purbeck beds,) of a low grade of quadrupeds ; and this per 
 sistency of similar generic and ordinal types in Europe while 
 the species were changing, and while the fish, reptiles, and 
 mollusca were undergoing vast modifications, raises a strong 
 presumption that there was also a vast extension in space of 
 the same marsupial forms during that portion of the secondary 
 epoch which has been termed c the age of reptiles.' 
 
 As to the class Eeptilia, some of the orders which pre 
 vailed when the secondary rocks were formed are confessedly 
 much higher in their organisation than any of the same 
 class now living. If the less perfect ophidians, or snakes, 
 which now abound on the earth had taken the lead in those 
 ancient days among the land reptiles, and the Deinosaurians 
 had been contemporary with Man, there can be no doubt 
 that the progressionist would have seized upon this fact with 
 unfeigned satisfaction as confirmatory of his views. Now 
 that the order of succession is precisely reversed, and that 
 the age of' the Iguanodon was long anterior to that of the 
 Eocene palseophis and living boa, while the crocodile is in 
 our own times the highest representative of its class, a retro 
 grade movement in this important division of the vertebrata 
 must be admitted. It may perhaps be accounted for by the 
 power acquired by the placental mammalia, when they 
 became dominant, a power before which the class of verte 
 brata next below them, as coming most directly in com 
 petition with them, may, more than any other, have given 
 way. 
 
 For no less than thirty-four years it had been a received 
 
CHAP. XX. VERTEBRATA UNKNOWN IN OLDEST KOCKS. 403 
 
 axiom in palaeontology, that reptiles had never existed before 
 the Permian or Magnesian limestone period, when at length, 
 in 1844, this supposed barrier was thrown down, and carbo 
 niferous reptiles, terrestrial and aquatic, of several genera, 
 were brought to light ; and discussions are now going on as to 
 whether some remains of an enaliosaur have not been detected 
 in the coal of Nova Scotia, and whether certain sandstones, 
 near Elgin in Scotland, containing the bones of lacertian, 
 crocodilian, and rhyncosaurian reptiles, may not be referable 
 to the ' Old Eed ' or Devonian group. 
 
 Still, no traces of this class have yet been detected in 
 rocks as ancient as those in which the oldest fish have been 
 found. 
 
 As to fossil representatives of the ichthyic type, the most 
 ancient were not supposed, before 1838, to be of a date 
 anterior to the Coal, but they have since been traced 
 back, first to the Devonian, and then to the Upper Silurian 
 rocks. No remains, however, of them or of any vertebrate 
 animal have yet "been discovered in the Lower Silurian strata, 
 rich as these are in invertebrate fossils, nor in the still older 
 primordial zone of Barrande ; so that we seem authorised to 
 conclude, though not without considerable reserve, that the 
 vertebrate type was extremely scarce, if not wholly wanting, 
 in those epochs often spoken of as ( primitive,' but which, if 
 the Development Theory be true, were probably the last 
 of a long series of antecedent ages in which living beings 
 flourished. 
 
 As to the Mollusca, which afford the most unbroken series of 
 geological medals, the highest of that class, the cephalopoda, 
 abounded in older Silurian times, comprising several hundred 
 species of chambered univalves. Had there been strong pre 
 possessions against the progressive theory, it would probably 
 have been argued that when these cephalopods abounded, and 
 the siphonated gasteropods were absent, a higher order of 
 
 D D 2 
 
404 OBJECTIONS TO THE THEORY OF CHAP. xx. 
 
 zoophagous mollusca discharged the functions afterwards per 
 formed by an inferior order in the secondary, tertiary, and post- 
 tertiary seas. But I have never seen this view suggested as 
 adverse to the doctrine of progress, although much stress has 
 been laid on the fact, that the Silurian brachiopoda, creatures 
 of a lower grade, formerly discharged the functions of the exist 
 ing lamellibranchiate bivalves, which are higher in the scale. 
 
 It is said truly that the ammonite, orthoceras, and nautilus 
 of these ancient rocks were of the tetrabranchiate division, 
 and none of them so highly organised as the belemnite and 
 other dibranchiate cephalopods which afterwards appeared, 
 and some of which now flourish in our seas. Therefore, we 
 may infer that the simplest forms of the cephalopoda took 
 precedence of the more complex in time. But if wo embrace 
 this view, we must not forget that there are living cephalo 
 poda, such as the octopods, which are devoid of any hard 
 parts, whether external or internal, and which .eould leave 
 behind them no fossil memorials of their .existence ; so that 
 we must make a somewhat arbitrary assumption, namely, 
 that at a remote era, no such dibranchiata were in being, in 
 order to avail ourselves of this argument in favour of pro 
 gression. On the other hand, it is true that .in the ' primordial 
 zone ' of Barrande not even the shell -bearing tetrabranchiates 
 have yet been discovered. 
 
 In regard to plants, although the generalisation, above 
 cited, of M. Adolphe Brongniart (p. 398) is probably true, 
 there has been a tendency in the advocates of progression to 
 push the inferences deducible from known facts, in support of 
 their favourite dogma, somewhat beyond the limits which the 
 evidence justifies. Dr. Hooker observes, in his recent intro 
 ductory essay on the flora of Australia, that it is impossible to 
 establish a parallel between the successive appearances of 
 vegetable forms in time, and -their complexity of structure or 
 specialisation of organs as represented by the successively 
 
 
CHAP. xx. PROGRESSION CONSIDERED. 405 
 
 higher groups in the natural method of classification. He 
 also adds that the earliest recognisable cryptogams are not 
 only the highest now existing, but have more highly diffe 
 rentiated vegetative organs than any subsequently appearing, 
 and that the dicotyledonous embryo and perfect exogenous 
 wood, with the highest specialised tissue known (the coniferous 
 with glandular tissue),, preceded the monocotyledonous em 
 bryo and endogenous wood in date of appearance on the 
 globe facts wholly opposed to the doctrine of progression, 
 and which can only be set aside on the supposition that they 
 are fragmentary evidence of a kind farther removed from the 
 origin of vegetation than from the present day.* 
 
 It would be an easy task to- multiply objections to the 
 theory now under consideration ; but from this I refrain, as I 
 regard it not only as a useful r but rather, in the present state 
 of science, as an indispensable hypothesis, and one which, 
 though destined hereafter to undergo many and great modifi 
 cations, will never be overthrown. 
 
 It may be thought almost paradoxical that writers who are 
 most in favour of transmutation (Mr. C. Darwin and Dr. J. 
 Hooker, for example) are nevertheless among those who are 
 most cautious, and one would say timid, in their mode of es 
 pousing the doctrine of progression ; while, on the other hand, 
 the most zealous advocates of progression are oftener than 
 not very vehement opponents of transmutation. We might 
 have anticipated a contrary leaning on the part of both, for 
 to what does the theory of progression point ? It supposes 
 a gradual elevation in grade of the vertebrate type, in the 
 course of ages, from the most simple ichthyic form to that 
 of the placental mammalia and the coming upon the stage 
 last in the order of time of the most anthropomorphous 
 mammalia, followed by the human race this last thus ap- 
 
 * Flora of Australia, Introductory Essay, p. xxi. London, 1859. Published 
 separately. 
 
406 PROGRESSION AND TRANSMUTATION. CHAP. xx. 
 
 pearing as an integral part of the same continuous series of 
 acts of development, one link in the same chain, the crowning- 
 operation as it were of one and the same series of manifesta 
 tions of creative power. If the dangers apprehended from 
 transmutation arise from the too intimate connection which 
 it tends to establish between the human and merely animal 
 natures, it might have been expected that the progressive 
 development of organisation, instinct, and intelligence might 
 have been unpopular, as likely to pioneer the way for the re 
 ception of the less favoured doctrine. But the true explana 
 tion of the seeming anomaly is this, that no one can believe 
 in transmutation who is not profoundly convinced that all 
 we know in paleontology is as nothing compared to what we 
 have yet to learn, and they who regard the record as so 
 fragmentary, and our acquaintance with the fragments which 
 are extant as so rudimentary, are apt to be astounded at 
 the confidence placed by the progressionists in data which 
 must be defective in the extreme. But exactly in propor 
 tion as the completeness of the record and our knowledge of 
 it are overrated, in that same degree are many progressionists 
 unconscious of the goal towards which they are drifting. 
 Their faith in the fullness of the annals leads them to 
 regard all breaks in the series of organic existence, or in 
 the sequence of the fossiliferous rocks, as proofs of original 
 chasms and leaps in the course of nature, signs of the inter 
 mittent action of the creational force, or of catastrophes which 
 devastated the habitable surface ; and they are therefore fear 
 less of discovering any continuity of plan (except that which 
 must have existed in the Divine mind) which would imply a 
 material connection between the outgoing organisms and the 
 incoming ones. 
 
CHAP. xxi. ORIGIN OF SPECIES, 407 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXL 
 
 ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES BY VARIATION AND NATURAL 
 
 SELECTION. 
 
 MR. DARWIN'S THEORY OF THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES BY NATURAL 
 
 SELECTION MEMOIR BY MR. WALLACE MANNER IN WHICH FAVOURED 
 
 RACES PREVAIL IN THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE FORMATION OF 
 NEW RACES BY BREEDING HYPOTHESES OF DEFINITE AND INDEFINITE 
 MODIFIABILITY EQUALLY ARBITRARY COMPETITION AND EXTINCTION 
 
 OF RACES PROGRESSION NOT A NECESSARY ACCOMPANIMENT OF 
 
 VARIATION DISTINCT CLASSES OF PHENOMENA WHICH NATURAL 
 
 SELECTION EXPLAINS UNITY OF TYPE, RUDIMENTARY ORGANS, GEO 
 GRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION, RELATION OF THE EXTINCT TO THE LIVING 
 FAUNA AND FLORA, AND MUTUAL RELATIONS OF SUCCESSIVE GROUPS 
 OF FOSSIL FORMS LIGHT THROWN ON EMBRYOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT 
 
 BY NATURAL SELECTION WHY LARGE GENERA HAVE MORE VARIABLE 
 
 SPECIES THAN SMALL ONES DR. HOOKER ON THE EVIDENCE AFFORDED 
 BY THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM IN FAVOUR OF CREATION BY VARIATION 
 SEFSTROM ON ALTERNATE GENERATION HOW FAR THE DOCTRINE 
 
 OF INDEPENDENT CREATION IS OPPOSED TO THE LAWS NOW GOVERNING 
 THE MIGRATION OF SPECIES. 
 
 FOR many years after the promulgation of Lamarck's doc 
 trine of progressive development, geologists were much 
 occupied with the question whether the past changes in the 
 animate and inanimate world were brought about by sudden 
 and paroxysmal action, or gradually and continuously, by 
 causes differing neither in kind nor degree from those now in 
 operation. 
 
 The anonymous author of ( The Vestiges of Creation ' pub 
 lished in 1844 a treatise, written in a clear and attractive 
 style, which made the English public familiar with the lead 
 ing views of Lamarck on transmutation and progression, but 
 brought no new facts or original line of argument to sup- 
 
408 ME. DARWIN'S THEORY OF THE ORIGIN OF CHAP. xxi. 
 
 port those views, or to combat the principal objections which 
 the scientific world entertained against them. 
 
 No decided step in this direction was made until the pub 
 lication in 1858 of two papers, one by Mr. Darwin and 
 another by Mr. Wallace, followed in 1859 by Mr. Darwin's 
 celebrated work on ' The Origin of Species by Means of 
 Natural Selection ; or, the Preservation of favoured Eaces in 
 the Struggle for Life.' The author of this treatise had for 
 twenty previous years strongly inclined to believe that varia 
 tion and the ordinary laws of reproduction were among the 
 secondary causes always employed by the Author of nature, in 
 the introduction from time to time of new species into the 
 world, and he had devoted himself patiently to the collecting 
 of facts, and making of experiments in zoology and botany, 
 with a view of testing the soundness of the theory of trans 
 mutation. Part of the MS. of his projected work was read 
 to Dr. Hooker as early as 1844, and some of the principal 
 results were communicated to me on several occasions. 
 Dr. Hooker and I had repeatedly urged him to publish 
 without delay, but in vain, as he was always unwilling to 
 interrupt the course of his investigations; until at length 
 Mr. Alfred E. Wallace, who had been engaged for years in 
 collecting and studying the animals of the East Indian 
 archipelago, thought out, independently for himself, one of 
 the most novel and important of Mr. Darwin's theories. 
 This he embodied in an essay f On the Tendency of Varieties 
 to depart indefinitely from the original Type.' It was written 
 at Ternate, in February 1858, and sent to Mr. Darwin/ with a 
 request that it might be shown to me if thought sufficiently 
 novel and interesting. Dr. Hooker and I were of opinion that 
 it should be immediately printed, and we succeeded in per 
 suading Mr. Darwin to allow one of the MS. chapters of his 
 ' Origin of Species,' entitled ( On the Tendency of Species 
 to form Varieties, and on the Perpetuation of Species and 
 
CHAP. xxi. SPECIES BY NATURAL SELECTION. 409 
 
 Varieties by natural Means of Selection,' to appear at the 
 same time.* 
 
 By reference to these memoirs it will be seen that both 
 writers begin by applying to the animal and vegetable worlds 
 the Malthusian doctrine of population, or its tendency to in 
 crease in a geometrical ratio, while food can only be made to 
 augment even locally in an arithmetical one. There being, 
 therefore, no room or means of subsistence for a large pro 
 portion of the plants and animals which are born into the 
 world, a great number must annually perish. Hence there 
 is a constant struggle for existence among the individuals 
 which represent each species, and the vast majority can 
 never reach the adult state, to say nothing of the multitudes 
 of ova and seeds, which are never hatched or allowed to 
 germinate. Of birds it is estimated that the number of 
 those which die every year equals the aggregate number by 
 which the species to which they respectively belong is on the 
 average permanently represented. 
 
 The trial of strength, which must decide what individuals 
 are to survive and what to succumb, occurs in the season 
 when the means of subsistence are fewest, or enemies most 
 numerous, or when the individuals are enfeebled by climate 
 or other causes; and it is then that those varieties which 
 have any, even the slightest, advantage over others come off 
 victorious. They may often owe their safety to what would 
 seem to a casual observer a trifling difference, such as a darker 
 or lighter shade of colour rendering them less visible to a 
 species which preys upon them, or sometimes to attributes 
 more obviously advantageous, such as greater cunning, or 
 superior powers of flight or swiftness of foot. These peculiar 
 qualities and faculties, bodily and instinctive, may enable them 
 to outlive their less favoured rivals, and being transmitted 
 
 * See Proceedings of Linnean Society, 1858. 
 
410 FORMATION OF NEW RACES. CHAP. xxi. 
 
 by the force of inheritance to their offspring, will constitute 
 new races, or what Mr. Darwin calls ( incipient species.' If 
 one variety, being in other respects just equal to its com 
 petitors, happens to be more prolific, some of its offspring 
 will stand a greater chance of being among those which will 
 escape destruction, and their descendants, being in like 
 manner very fertile, will continue to multiply at the expense 
 of all less prolific varieties. 
 
 As breeders of domestic animals, when they choose certain 
 varieties in preference to others to breed from, speak techni 
 cally of their method as that of ' selecting,' Mr. Darwin calls 
 the combination of natural causes, which may enable certain 
 varieties of wild animals or plants to prevail over others of 
 the same species, e natural selection,' 
 
 A breeder finds that a new race of cattle with short horns 
 or without horns may be formed, in the course of several 
 generations, by choosing varieties having the most stunted 
 horns as his stock from which to breed ; so nature, by altering, 
 in. the course of ages, the conditions of life, the geographical 
 features of a country, its climate, the associated plants and 
 animals, and, consequently, the food and enemies of a species 
 and its mode of life, may be said, by this means, to select 
 certain varieties best adapted for the new state of things. 
 Such new races may often supplant the original type from 
 which they have diverged, although that type may have been 
 perpetuated without modification for countless anterior ages 
 in the same region, so long as it was in harmony with the 
 surrounding conditions then prevailing. 
 
 Lamarck, when speculating on the origin of the long neck 
 . of the giraffe, imagined that quadruped to have stretched 
 himself up in order to reach the boughs of lofty trees, until 
 ,by continued efforts, and longing to reach higher, he obtained 
 an elongated neck. Mr. Darwin and Mr. Wallace simply 
 suppose that, in a season of scarcity, a longer-necked variety, 
 
CHAP. xxi. COMPETITION OF RACES. 411 
 
 having the advantage in this respect over most of the herd, 
 as being able to browse on foliage out of their reach, survived 
 them, and transmitted its peculiarity of cervical conformation 
 to its successors. 
 
 By the multiplying of slight modifications in the course 
 of thousands of generations, and by the handing down of 
 the newly-acquired peculiarities by inheritance, a greater and 
 greater divergence from the original standard is supposed to 
 be effected, until what may be called a new species, or, in a 
 greater lapse of time, a new genus, will be the result. 
 
 Every naturalist admits that there is a general tendency in ' 
 animals and plants to vary ; but it is usually taken for granted, 
 though we have no means of proving the assumption to be 
 true, that there are certain limits beyond which each species 
 cannot pass under any circumstances, or in any number of 
 generations. Mr. Darwin and Mr. Wallace say that the 
 opposite hypothesis, which assumes that every species is 
 capable of varying indefinitely from its original type, is not 
 a whit more arbitrary, and has this manifest claim to be pre 
 ferred, that it will account for a multitude of phenomena 
 which the ordinary theory is incapable of explaining. 
 
 We have no right, they say, to assume, should we find that 
 a variable species can no longer be made to vary in a certain 
 direction, that it has reached the utmost limit to which it 
 might, under more favourable conditions, or if more time 
 were allowed, be made to diverge from the parent type. 
 
 Hybridisation is not considered by Mr. Darwin as a cause 
 of new species, but rather as tending to keep variation with 
 in bounds. Varieties which are nearly allied cross readily 
 with each other, and with the parent stock, and such cross 
 ing tends to keep the species true to its type, while forms 
 which are less nearly related, although they may intermarry, 
 produce no mule offspring capable of perpetuating their kind. 
 
 The competition of races and species, observes Mr. Darwin, 
 
412 PROGRESSION AND VARIATION. CHAP. xxi. 
 
 is always most severe between those which, are most closely 
 allied and which fill nearly the same place in the economy of 
 'nature. Hence, when the conditions of existence are modi 
 fied, the original stock runs great risk of being superseded 
 by some one of its modified offshoots. The new race or 
 species may not be absolutely superior in the sum of its 
 powers and endowments to the parent stock, and may even be 
 more simple in structure and of a lower grade of intelligence, 
 as well as of organisation, provided, on the whole, it happens 
 to have some slight advantage over its rivals. Progression, 
 therefore, is not a necessary accompaniment of variation and 
 natural selection, though, when a higher organisation hap 
 pens to be coincident with superior fitness to new conditions, 
 the new species will have greater power and a greater chance 
 of permanently maintaining and extending its ground. One 
 of the principal claims of Mr. Darwin's theory to acceptance 
 is, that it enables us to dispense with a law of progression 
 as a necessary accompaniment of variation. It will account 
 equally well for what is called degradation, or a retrograde 
 movement towards a simpler structure, and does not require 
 Lamarck's continual creation of monads ; for this was a 
 necessary part of his system, in order to explain how, after 
 the progressive power had been at work for myriads of ages, 
 there were as many beings of the simplest structure in exist 
 ence as ever. 
 
 Mr. Darwin labours to show, and with no small success, 
 that all true classification in zoology and botany is, in fact, 
 genealogical, and that community of descent is the hidden 
 bond which naturalists have been unconsciously seeking, 
 while they often imagined that they were looking for some 
 unknown plan of creation. 
 
 As the < Origin of Species,'* is in itself a condensed 
 
 * Origin of Species, p. 121. 
 
CHAP. xxi. * NATURAL SELECTION.' 413 
 
 abstract of a much larger work not yet published, I could 
 not easily give an analysis of its contents within narrower 
 limits than those of the original, but it may be useful to 
 enumerate briefly some of the principal classes of phenomena 
 on which the theory of e Natural Selection ' is believed by 
 its author to throw light. 
 
 In the first place, it would explain, says Mr. Darwin, the 
 unity of type which runs through the whole organic world, 
 and why there is sometimes a fundamental agreement in 
 structure in the same class of beings which is quite indepen 
 dent of their habits of life, for such structure, derived by 
 inheritance from a remote progenitor, has been modified, in 
 the course of ages, in different ways, according to the condi 
 tions of existence. It would also explain why all living and 
 extinct beings are united, by complex radiating and circuitous 
 lines of affinity with one another, into one grand system ; * 
 also, there having been a continued extinction of old races 
 and species in progress, and a formation of new ones by varia 
 tion, why in some genera which are largely represented, or to 
 which a great many species belong, many of these are closely 
 but unequally related; also, why there are distinct geographical 
 provinces of species of animals and plants, for, after long 
 isolation by physical barriers, each fauna and flora, by varying 
 continually, must become distinct from its ancestral type, 
 and from the new forms assumed by other descendants which 
 have diverged from the same stock. 
 
 The theory of indefinite modification would also explain why 
 rudimentary organs are so useful in classification, being the 
 remnants preserved by inheritance of organs which the present 
 species once used as in the case of the rudiments of eyes 
 in insects and reptiles inhabiting dark caverns, or of the 
 wings of birds and beetles which have lost all power of flight. 
 
 * Origin, p. 498. 
 
414 NATURAL SELECTION. CHAP. XXT. 
 
 IQ such cases the affinities of species are often more readily 
 discerned by reference to these imperfect structures than by 
 others of much more physiological importance to the in 
 dividuals themselves. 
 
 The same hypothesis would explain why there are no mam 
 malia in islands far from continents, except bats, which can 
 reach them by flying ; and also why the birds, insects, plants, 
 and other inhabitants of islands, even when specifically 
 unlike, usually agree generically with those of the nearest 
 continent, it being assumed that the original stock of such 
 species came by migration from the nearest land. 
 
 Variation and natural selection would also afford a key to a 
 multitude of geological facts otherwise wholly unaccounted 
 for, as, for example, why there is generally an intimate con 
 nection between the living animals and plants of each great 
 division of the globe and the extinct fauna and flora of the 
 post- tertiary or tertiary formations of the same region ; as, for 
 example, in North America, where we not only find among the 
 living mollusca peculiar forms foreign to Europe, such as Grna- 
 thodon and Fulgur (a subgenus of Pyrula), but meet also with 
 extinct species of those same genera in the tertiary fauna of the 
 same part of the world. In like manner, among the mammalia 
 we find in Australia not only living kangaroos and wombats, 
 but fossil individuals of extinct species of the same genera. 
 So also there are recent and fossil sloths, armadilloes, and other 
 edentata in South America, and living and extinct species 
 of elephant, rhinoceros, tiger, and bear in the great Europeo- 
 Asiatic continent. The theory of the origin of new species 
 by variation will also explain why a species which has once 
 died out never reappears, and why the fossil fauna arid flora 
 recede farther and farther from the living type in propor 
 tion as we trace it back to remoter ages. It would also 
 account for the fact, that when we have to intercalate a new 
 get of fossiliferous strata between two groups previously 
 
CHAP. xxi. EMBRYOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT. 415 
 
 known, the newly discovered fossils serve to fill up gaps 
 between specific or generic types previously familiar to us, 
 supplying often the missing links of the chain, which, if 
 transmutation is accepted, must once have been continuous. 
 
 One of the most original speculations in Mr. Darwin's 
 work is derived from the fact that, in the breeding of 
 animals, it is often observed that at whatever age any varia 
 tion first appears in the parent, it tends to reappear at a 
 corresponding age in the offspring. Hence the young in 
 dividuals of two races which have sprung from the same 
 parent stock are usually more like each other than the 
 adults. Thus the puppies of the greyhound and bull-dog 
 are much more nearly alike in their proportions than the 
 grown-up dogs, and in like manner the foals of the cart and 
 racehorse than the adult individuals. For the same reason 
 we may understand why the species of the same genus, 
 or genera of the same family, resemble each other more 
 nearly in their embryonic than in their more fully developed 
 state, or how it is that in the eyes of most naturalists the 
 structure of the embryo is even more important in classifica 
 tion than that of the adult, 6 for the embryo is the animal in 
 its less modified state, and in so far it reveals the structure 
 of its progenitor. In two groups of animals, however much 
 they may at present differ from each other in structure and 
 habits, if they pass through the same or similar embryonic 
 stages, we may feel assured that they have both descended 
 from the same or nearly similar parents, and are therefore in 
 that degree closely related. Thus community in embryonic 
 structure reveals community of descent, however much the 
 structure of the adult may have been modified.'* 
 
 If then there had been a system of progressive develop 
 ment, the successive changes through which the embryo of a 
 
 * Darwin, Origin, &c., p. 448. 
 
416 VAKIETIES, INCIPIENT SPECIES. ' CHAP. xxi. 
 
 species of a high class, a mammifer, for example, now passes, 
 may be expected to present us with a picture of the stages 
 through which, in the course of ages, that class of animals 
 has successively passed in advancing from a lower to a 
 higher grade. Hence the embryonic states exhibited one 
 after the other by the human individual bear a certain amount 
 of resemblance to those of the fish, reptile, and bird before 
 assuming those of the highest division of the vertebrata. 
 
 Mr. Darwin, after making a laborious analysis of many 
 floras, found that those genera which are represented by a 
 large number of species contain a greater number of variable 
 species, relatively speaking, than the smaller genera, or those 
 less numerously represented. This fact he adduces in support 
 of his opinion that varieties are incipient species, for he ob 
 serves that the existence of the larger genera implies, in the 
 period immediately preceding our own, that the manufacturing 
 of species has been active, in which case we ought generally 
 to find the same forces still in full activity, more especially 
 as we have every reason to believe the process by which new 
 species are produced is a slow one.* 
 
 Dr. Hooker tells us that he was long disposed to doubt 
 this result, as he was acquainted with so many variable small 
 genera, but after examining Mr. Darwin's data, he was com 
 pelled to acquiesce in his generalisation.! 
 
 It is one of those conclusions, to verify which requires the 
 investigation of many thousands of species, and to which 
 exceptions may easily be adduced, both in the animal and 
 vegetable kingdoms, so that it will be long before we can 
 expect it to be thoroughly tested, and, if true, fairly appre 
 ciated. Among the most striking exceptions will be some 
 genera still large, but which are beginning to decrease, the 
 conditions which were favourable to their former predomi- 
 
 * Origin of Species, ch. ii. p. 56. 
 
 f Introductory Essay on Flora of Australia, p. vi. 
 
CHAP. xxi. THEORY OF 6 CREATION BY VARIATION.' 417 
 
 nance having already begun to change. To many, this doc 
 trine of Natural Selection, or 'the preservation of favoured 
 races in the struggle for life,' seems so simple, when once 
 clearly stated, and so consonant with known facts and 
 received principles, that they have difficulty in conceiving 
 how it can constitute a great step in the progress of science. 
 Such is often the case with important discoveries, but in 
 order to assure ourselves that the doctrine was by no means 
 obvious, we have only to refer back to the writings of skilful 
 naturalists who attempted in the earlier part of the nine 
 teenth century, to theorise on this subject, before the inven 
 tion of this new method of explaining how certain forms 
 are supplanted by new ones, and in what manner these 
 last are selected out of innumerable varieties, and rendered 
 permanent. 
 
 Dr. Hooker, on the Theory of ' Creation by Variation ' as 
 applied to'the Vegetable Kingdom. 
 
 Of Dr. Hooker, whom I have often cited in this chapter, 
 Mr. Darwin has spoken in the Introduction to his ( Origin of 
 Species,' as one f who had, for fifteen years, aided him in every 
 possible way, by his large stores of knowledge, and his excel 
 lent judgement.' This distinguished botanist published his 
 ' Introductory Essay to the Flora of Australia ' * in 1859, the 
 year after the memoir on ( Natural Selection 'was communi 
 cated to the Linnsean Society, and a few months before 
 the appearance of the f Origin of Species.' 
 
 Having, in the course of his extensive travels, studied the 
 botany of arctic, temperate, and tropical regions, and writ 
 ten on the flora of India, which he had examined at all 
 heights above the sea, from the plains of Bengal to the limits 
 
 * Introductory Essay, &c., sold separately. Loyell Eeeve, London, 1859. 
 
 E E 
 
418 MUTABILITY IN THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM. CHAP. xxi. 
 
 of perpetual snow in the Himalaya, and having specially 
 devoted his attention to ( geographical varieties,' or those 
 changes of character which plants exhibit, when traced over 
 wide areas and seen under new conditions ; being also prac 
 tically versed in the description arid classification of new 
 plants, from various parts of the world, and having been 
 called upon carefully to consider the claims of thousands of 
 varieties to rank as species, no one was better qualified by 
 observation and reflection to give an authoritative opinion on 
 the question, whether the present vegetation of the globe is 
 or is not in accordance with the theory which Mr. Darwin 
 has proposed. We cannot but feel, therefore, deeply inte 
 rested when we find him making tbe following declaration : 
 ( The mutual relations of the plants of each great botanical 
 province, and, in fact, of the world generally, is just such as 
 would have resulted if variation had gone on operating 
 throughout indefinite periods, in the same manner as we see 
 it act in a limited number of centuries, so as gradually to give 
 rise in the course of time, to the most widely divergent forms.' 
 In the same Essay, this author remarks, ' The element of 
 mutability pervades the whole Vegetable Kingdom ; no class, 
 nor order, nor genus of more than a few species claims abso 
 lute exemption from it, whilst the grand total of unstable 
 forms, generally assumed to be species, probably exceeds 
 that of the stable.' Yet he contends that species are neither 
 visionary, nor even arbitrary creations of the naturalist, but 
 realities, though they may not remain true for ever (p. 11). 
 The majority of them, he remarks, are so far constant, 
 4 within the range of our experience,' and their forms and 
 characters so faithfully handed down, through thousands of 
 generations, that they admit of being treated as if they were 
 permanent and immutable. But the range of ' our experi 
 ence ' is so limited, that it will not account for a single fact 
 in the present geographical distribution, or origin of any one 
 
CHAP. XXI. LIMITATION OF SPECIES. 419 
 
 species of plant, nor for the amount of variation it has 
 undergone, nor will it indicate the time when it first appeared, 
 nor the form it had when created.'* 
 
 To what an extent the limits of species are indefinable, is 
 evinced, he says, by the singular fact that, among those 
 botanists who believe them to be immutable, the number of 
 flowering plants is by some assumed to be 80,000, and by 
 others over 150,000. The general limitation of species to 
 certain areas, suggests the idea that each of them, with all 
 their varieties, have sprung from a common parent, and have 
 spread in various directions from a common centre. The 
 frequency also of the grouping of genera within certain 
 geographical limits, is in favour of the same law, although 
 the migration of species may sometimes cause apparent 
 exceptions to the rule, and make the same types appear to 
 have originated independently at different spots.f 
 
 Certain genera of plants, which like the brambles, roses, 
 and willows in Europe, consist of a continuous series of 
 varieties, between the terms of which no intermediate forms 
 can be intercalated, may be supposed to be on the increase, 
 and therefore undergoing much variation ; whereas genera 
 which present no such perplexing gradations, may be those 
 which have been losing species and varieties by extinction. 
 The annihilation of the intermediate forms which once 
 existed, makes it an easy task to distinguish those which 
 remain. 
 
 It had usually been supposed by the advocates of the 
 immutability of species, that domesticated races, if allowed to 
 run wild, always revert to their parent type. Mr. Wallace 
 had said in reply, that a domesticated species, if it loses the 
 protection of man, can only stand its ground in a wild state 
 by resuming those habits, and recovering those attributes 
 
 * Hooker, Introductory Essay, Flora of Australia. f Ibid. p. 13. 
 
 K 2 
 
420 REVERSION QUESTIONED. CHAP. xxi. 
 
 which it may have lost when under domestication. If these 
 faculties are so much enfeebled as to be irrecoverable, it will 
 perish ; if not, and if it can adapt itself to the surrounding con 
 ditions, it will revert to the state in which man first found it ; 
 for in one, two, or three thousand years, which may have 
 elapsed since it was originally tamed, there will not have 
 been time for such geographical, climatal, and organic changes, 
 as would only be suited to a new race, or a new and allied 
 species. 
 
 But in regard to plants, Dr. Hooker questions the fact of 
 reversion. According to him, species in general do not 
 readily vary, but when they once begin to do so, the new 
 varieties, as every horticulturist knows, show a great inclina 
 tion to go on departing more and more from the old stock. 
 As the best marked varieties of a wild species occur on the 
 confines of the area which it inhabits, so the best marked 
 varieties of a cultivated plant, are those last produced by the 
 gardener. Cabbages, for example, wall fruit, and cerealia, 
 show no disposition, when neglected, to assume the charac 
 ters of the wild states of these plants. Hence the difficulty of 
 determining what are the true parent species of most of our 
 cultivated plants. Thus the finer kinds of apples, if grown 
 from seed, degenerate and become crabs, but in so doing 
 they do not revert to the original wild crab-apple, but 
 become crab states of the varieties to which they belong.* 
 
 It would lead me into too long a digression, were I to 
 attempt to give a fuller analysis of this admirable essay ; but 
 I may add, that none of the observations are more in point, 
 as bearing on the doctrine of what Hooker terms ' creation 
 by variation,' than the great extent to which the internal 
 characters and properties of plants, or their physiological 
 constitution are capable of being modified, while they exhibit 
 
 * Introductory Essay, Flora of Australia, p. ix. 
 
CHAP. xxi. ALTERNATE GENERATION. 421 
 
 externally, no visible departure from the normal form. Thus, 
 in one region a species may possess peculiar medicinal quali 
 ties which it wants in another, or it may be hardier and 
 better able to resist cold. The average range in altitude, says 
 Hooker, of each species of flowering plant in the Himalayan 
 Mountains, whether in the tropical, temperate, or Alpine 
 region, is 4,000 feet, which is equivalent to twelve degrees 
 of isothermals of latitude. If an individual of any of these 
 species be taken from the upper limits of its range and 
 carried to England, it is found to be better able to stand our 
 climate than those from the lower or warmer stations. 
 When several of these internal or physiological modifications 
 are accompanied by variation in size, habits of growth, colour 
 of the flowers, and other external characters, and these are 
 found to be constant in successive generations, botanists may 
 well begin to differ in opinion as to whether they ought to 
 regard them as distinct species or not. 
 
 Alternate Generation. 
 
 Hitherto, no rival hypothesis has been proposed as a sub 
 stitute for the doctrine of transmutation ; for ( independent 
 creation,' as it is often termed, or the direct intervention of the 
 Supreme Cause, must simply be considered as an avowal that 
 we deem the question to lie beyond the domain of science. 
 
 The discovery by Sefstrom of alternate generation enlarges 
 our views of the range of metamorphosis through which a 
 species may pass, so that some of its stages (as when a Sertu- 
 laria and a Medusa interchange) deviate so far from others as 
 to have been referred by able zoologists to distinct genera, or 
 even families. But in all these cases the organism, after 
 running through a certain cycle of change, returns to the 
 exact point from which it set out, and no new form or species 
 is thereby introduced into the world. The only secondary 
 
4'22 INDEPENDENT CREATION. CHAP. xxr. 
 
 cause, therefore, which has, as yet, been even conjecturally 
 brought forward, to explain how, in the ordinary course of 
 nature, a new specific form may be generated is, as Lamarck 
 declared, ' variation,' and this has been rendered a far more 
 probable hypothesis by the way in which Natural Selection is 
 shown to give intensity and permanency to certain varieties. 
 
 Independent Creation. 
 
 When I formerly advocated the doctrine that species were 
 primordial creations, and not derivative, I endeavoured to 
 explain the manner of their geographical distribution, and 
 the affinity of living forms to the fossil types nearest akin 
 to them in the tertiary strata of the same part of the globe, 
 by supposing that the creative power, which originally adapts 
 certain types to aquatic and others to terrestrial conditions, 
 has, at successive geological epochs introduced new forms 
 best suited to each area and climate, so as to fill the places of 
 those which may have died out. 
 
 In that case, although the new species would differ from 
 the old (for these would not be revived, having been already 
 proved by the fact of their extinction, to be incapable of 
 holding their ground), still, they would resemble their pre 
 decessors generically. For, as Mr. Darwin states in regard 
 to new races, those of a dominant type inherit the advantages 
 which made their parent species flourish in the same country, 
 and they likewise partake in those general advantages which 
 made the genus to which the parent species belonged, a large 
 genus in its own country. 
 
 We might, therefore, by parity of reasoning, have antici 
 pated that the creative power, adapting the new types to the 
 new combination of organic and inorganic conditions of a 
 given region, such as its soil, climate, and inhabitants, would 
 introduce new modifications of the old types, marsupials, 
 
CHAP. xxi. INDEPENDENT CREATION. 423 
 
 for example in Australia, new sloths and armadilloes in South 
 America, new heaths at the Cape, new roses in the northern, 
 and new camelias in the southern hemisphere. But to this 
 line of argument Mr. Darwin and Dr. Hooker reply, that 
 when animals or plants migrate into new countries, whether 
 assisted by man, or without his aid, the most successful 
 colonisers appertain by no means to those types which are 
 most allied to the old indigenous species. On the contrary, 
 it more frequently happens that members of genera, orders, 
 or even classes, distinct and foreign to the invaded country, 
 make their way most rapidly, and become dominant at the 
 expense of the endemic species. Such is the case with the 
 placental quadrupeds in Australia, and with horses and many 
 foreign plants in the pampas of South America, and number 
 less instances in the United States and elsewhere, which 
 might easily be enumerated. Hence, the transmutationists 
 infer that, the reason why these foreign types, so peculiarly 
 fitted for these regions have never before been developed 
 there, is simply that they were excluded by natural barriers. 
 But these barriers of sea, or desert, or mountain, could never 
 have been of the least avail, had the creative force acted 
 independently of material laws, or had it not pleased the 
 Author of Nature that the origin of new species should be 
 governed by some secondary causes analogous to those which 
 we see preside over the appearance of new varieties, which 
 never appear except as the offspring of a parent stock very 
 closely resembling them. 
 
424 THEORY OF TRANSMUTATION. CHAP. XXIT. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 OBJECTIONS TO THE HYPOTHESIS OF TRANSMUTATION CONSIDERED. 
 
 STATEMENT OF OBJECTIONS TO THE HYPOTHESIS OF TRANSMUTATION 
 FOUNDED ON THE ABSENCE OF INTERMEDIATE FORMS - GENERA OF 
 WHICH THE SPECIES ARE CLOSELY ALLIED OCCASIONAL DISCOVERY OF 
 THE MISSING LINKS IN A FOSSIL STATE - DAVIDSON'S MONOGRAPH ON 
 THE BRACHIOPODA - WHY THE GRADATION AL FORMS, WHEN FOUND, 
 ARE NOT ACCEPTED AS EVIDENCE OF TRANSMUTATION GAPS CAUSED 
 BY EXTINCTION OF RACES AND SPECIES - VAST TERTIARY PERIODS 
 DURING WHICH THIS EXTINCTION HAS BEEN GOING ON IN THE FAUNA 
 AND FLORA NOW EXISTING - GENEALOGICAL BOND BETWEEN MIOCENE 
 AND RECENT PLANTS AND INSECTS - FOSSILS OF OENINGHEN SPECIES 
 OF INSECTS IN BRITAIN AND NORTH AMERICA REPRESENTED BY 
 DISTINCT VARIETIES FALCONER'S MONOGRAPH ON LIVING AND FOSSIL 
 ELEPHANTS FOSSIL SPECIES AND GENERA OF THE HORSE TRIBE IK 
 NORTH AND SOUTH AMERICA - RELATION OF THE PLIOCENE MAMMALIA. 
 OF NORTH AMERICA, ASIA, AND EUROPE SPECIES OF MAMMALIA, 
 THOUGH LESS PERSISTENT THAN THE MOLLUSCA, CHANGE SLOWLY 
 ARGUMENTS FOR AND AGAINST TRANSMUTATION DERIVED FROM THE 
 ABSENCE OF MAMMALIA IN ISLANDS IMPERFECTION OF THE GEOLO 
 GICAL RECORD INTERCALATION OF NEWLY DISCOVERED FORMATION 
 OF INTERMEDIATE AGE IN THE CHRONOLOGICAL SERIES REFERENCE 
 OF THE ST. CASSIAN BEDS TO THE TRIASSIC PERIODS - DISCOVERY OF 
 NEW ORGANIC TYPES FEATHERED ARCHEOPTERYX OF THE OOLITE. 
 
 Theory of Transmutation Absence of Intei^mediate Links. 
 
 most obvious and popular of the objections urged 
 -L against the theory of transmutation may be thus ex 
 pressed : If the extinct species of plants and animals of the 
 later geological periods were the progenitors of the living 
 species, and gave origin to them by variation and natural 
 selection, where are all the intermediate forms, fossil and 
 living, through which the lost types must have passed during 
 their conversion into the living ones ? And why do we not 
 find almost everywhere passages between the nearest allied 
 
CHAP. xxn. OBJECTIONS TO TRANSMUTATION. 425 
 
 species and genera, instead of such strong lines of demarca 
 tion, and often wide intervening gaps ? 
 
 We may consider this objection under two heads: 
 
 First, To what extent are the gradational links really 
 wanting in the living creation or in the fossil world, and how 
 far may we expect to discover such as are missing by future 
 research ? 
 
 Secondly, Are the gaps more numerous than we ought 
 to anticipate, allowing for the original defective state of the 
 geological records, their subsequent dilapidation, and our 
 slight acquaintance with such parts of them as are extant, 
 and allowing also for the rate of extinction of races and 
 species now going on, and which has been going on since the 
 commencement of the tertiary period ? 
 
 First, As to the alleged absence of intermediate varieties 
 connecting one species with another, every zoologist and 
 botanist who has engaged in the task of classification has 
 been occasionally thrown into this dilemma, if I make 
 more than one species in this group, I must, to be consistent, 
 make a great many. Even in a limited region like the British 
 Isles, this embarrassment is continually felt. 
 
 Scarcely any two botanists, for example, can agree as to 
 the number of roses, still less as to how many species of 
 bramble we possess. Of the latter genus, Rubus, there is 
 one set of forms, respecting which it is still a question 
 whether it ought to be regarded as constituting three species 
 or thirty-seven. Mr. Bentham adopts the first alternative, 
 and Mr. Babington the second, in their well-known treatises 
 on British plants. 
 
 We learn from Dr. Hooker's Flora of Australia that this 
 same genus Rubus abounds likewise at the antipodes, and is 
 there also rich in variable species. When we consider how, as 
 we extend our knowledge of the same plant over a wider area, 
 new geographical varieties commonly present themselves, and 
 
426 DAVIDSON ON FOSSIL BRACIIIOPODA. CHAP. xxn. 
 
 then endeavour to imagine the number of forms of the genus 
 Rubus which may now exist, or probably have existed in 
 Europe, and in regions intervening between Europe and 
 Australia, comprehending all which may have flourished in 
 tertiary and post-tertiary periods, we shall perceive how little 
 stress should be laid on arguments founded on the assumed 
 absence of missing links in the flora as it now exists. 
 
 If in the battle of life the competition is keenest between 
 closely allied varieties and species, as Mr. Darwin contends, 
 many forms can never be of long duration, nor have a wide 
 range, and these must often pass away without leaving behind 
 them any fossil memorials. In this manner we may account 
 for many breaks in the series which no future researches will 
 ever fill up. 
 
 Davidson on Fossil Brachiopoda. 
 
 It is from fossil conchology more than from any other 
 department of the organic world that we may hope to derive 
 traces of a transition from certain types to others, and fossil 
 memorials of all the intermediate shades of form. We may 
 especially hope to gain this information from the study of 
 some of the lower groups, such as the Brachiopoda, which are 
 persistent in type, so that the thread of our enquiry is less 
 likely to be interrupted by breaks in the sequence of the 
 fossiliferous rocks. The splendid monograph just concluded 
 by Mr. Davidson, on the British Brachiopoda, illustrates, in 
 the first place, the tendency of certain generic forms in this 
 division of the mollusca to be persistent throughout the 
 whole range of geological time yet known to us ; for the four 
 genera Rhynconella, Crania, Discina, and Lingula have 
 been traced through the Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, 
 Permian, Jurassic, Cretaceous, Tertiary, and Eecent periods, 
 and still retain in the existing seas the identical shape and 
 
CHAP. xxii. DAVIDSON ON FOSSIL ERACHIOPODA. 427 
 
 character which they exhibited in the earliest formations. 
 On the other hand, other brachiopoda have gone through in 
 shorter periods a vast series of transformations, so that 
 distinct specific, and even generic names have been given to 
 , the same varying form, according to the different aspects 
 and characters it has put on in successive sets of strata. 
 
 In proportion as materials of comparison have accu 
 mulated, the necessity of uniting species, previously re 
 garded as distinct, under one denomination has become 
 more and more apparent. Mr. Davidson, accordingly, after 
 studying not less than 260 reputed species from the British 
 carboniferous rocks, has been obliged to reduce that num 
 ber to 100, to which he has added 20 species either entirely 
 new or new to the British strata; but he declares his con 
 viction that, when our knowledge of these 120 brachiopoda 
 is more complete, a further reduction of species will take 
 place. 
 
 Speaking of one of these forms, which he calls Spirifer 
 trigonalis, he says that it is so dissimilar to another extreme 
 of the series, 8. crassa, that in the first part of his memoir 
 (published some ten years ago) he described them as distinct, 
 and the idea of confounding them together must, he admits, 
 appear absurd to those who have never seen the intermediate 
 links, such as are presented by S. bisulcata, and at least four 
 others with their varieties, most of them shells formerly 
 recognised as distinct by the most eminent paleontologists, 
 but respecting which these same authorities now agree with 
 Mr. Davidson in uniting them into one species.* 
 
 The same species has sometimes continued to exist under 
 slightly modified forms throughout the whole of the Lower 
 and Upper Silurian as well as the entire Devonian and Car 
 boniferous periods, as in the case of the shell generally known 
 
 * Monograph on British Brachiopoda, Paleontological Society, p. 222. 
 
428 DAVIDSON ON FOSSIL BRACHIOPODA. CHAP. xxn. 
 
 as Leptcena depressa, which we must now call, in obedience to 
 the law of priority of nomenclature, Anomites (or Stropho- 
 mena) rhomboidalis, Wahlenberg. No less than fifteen com 
 monly received species are demonstrated by Mr. Davidson, by 
 the aid of a long series of transitional forms, to appertain to 
 this one type, and it is acknowledged by some of the best 
 writers that they were induced to give distinct names to some 
 of the varieties now suppressed on purely theoretical grounds, 
 namely, because they found them in rocks so widely remote 
 in time, that they deemed it contrary to analogy to suppose 
 that the same species could have endured so long a mode of 
 reasoning analogous to that which leads some zoologists and 
 botanists to distinguish by specific names slight varieties of 
 living plants and animals met with in very remote countries, 
 as in Europe and Australia, for example, it being assumed 
 that each species has had a single birth-place or area of 
 creation, and that they could not by migration have gone 
 from the northern to the southern hemisphere across the 
 intervening tropics. 
 
 Examples are also given by Mr. Davidson of species which 
 pass from the Devonian into the Carboniferous, and from that 
 again into the Permian rocks. The vast longevity of such 
 specific forms has not been generally recognised in conse 
 quence of the change of names, which they have undergone 
 when derived from such distant formations, as when Atrypa 
 unguicularis assumes, when derived from a carboniferous 
 rock, the name of Spirifer Urii, besides several other syno 
 nyms, and then, when it reaches the Permian period, takes the 
 name of Spirifer Glannyana, (King) ; all of which forms the 
 author of the monograph, now under consideration, asserts to 
 be one and the same. 
 
 No geologist will deny that the distance of time which 
 separates some of the eras above alluded to, or the dates of 
 the earliest and latest appearances of some of the fossils 
 
CHAP. xxn. WIDE RANGE OF VARIATION. 429 
 
 above mentioned, must be reckoned by millions of years. 
 According to Mr. Darwin's views, it is only by having at our 
 command the records of such enormous periods, that we can 
 expect to be able to point out the gradations which unite 
 very distinct specific forms. But the advocate of transmu 
 tation must not be disappointed if, when he has succeeded in 
 obtaining some of the proofs which he was, challenged to pro 
 duce, they make no impression on the mind of his opponent. 
 All that will be conceded is that specific variation in the 
 Brachiopoda, at least, has a wider range than was formerly 
 suspected. So long as several allied species were brought 
 nearer and nearer to each other, considerable uneasiness might 
 have been felt as to the reality of species in general, but when 
 fifteen or more are once fairly merged in one group, consti 
 tuting in the aggregate a single species, one, and indivisible, 
 and capable of being readily distinguished from every other 
 group at present kno^n, all misgivings are at an end. Implicit 
 trust in the immutability of species is then restored, and the 
 more insensible the shades from one extreme to the other, in 
 a word, the more complete the evidence of transition, the 
 more nugatory does the argument derived from it appear. 
 It then simply resolves itself into one of those exceptional 
 instances of what is called a protean form. 1 
 
 Thirty years ago a great London dealer in shells, himself an 
 able naturalist, told me that there was nothing he had so 
 much reason to dread, as tending to depreciate his stock in 
 trade, as the appearance of a good monograph on some large 
 genus of mollusca ; for, in proportion as the work was executed 
 in a philosophical spirit, it was sure to injure him, every 
 reputed species pronounced to be a mere variety becoming 
 from that time unsaleable. Fortunately, so much progress 
 has since been made in England in estimating the true ends 
 and aims of science, that specimens indicating a passage 
 between forms usually separated by wide gaps, whether in 
 
430 IDENTITY OF FOSSIL WITH LIVING MOLLUSCA. CHAP. xxrr. 
 
 the recent or fossil fauna, are eagerly sought for, and often 
 more prized than the mere normal or typical forms. 
 
 It is clear, that the more ancient the existing mollusca, or 
 the farther back into the past we can trace the remains of 
 shells still living, the more easy it becomes to reconcile with 
 the doctrine of transmutation the distinctness in character of 
 the majority of living species. For, what we want is time, 
 first, for the gradual formation, and then for the extinction 
 of races and allied species, occasioning gaps between the 
 survivors. 
 
 In the year 1830, I announced, on the authority of 
 M. Deshayes, that about one-fifth of the mollusca of the 
 Falunian or Upper Miocene strata of Europe, belonged to 
 living species. Although the soundness of that conclusion 
 was afterwards called in question by two or three eminent 
 conchologists (and by the late M. Alcide d'Orbigny among 
 others), it has since been confirmed by the majority of living- 
 naturalists, and is well borne out by the copious evidence 
 on the subject laid before the public in the magnificent work 
 edited by M. Homes, and published under the auspices of 
 the Austrian Government, ' On the Fossil Shells of the 
 Vienna Basin.' 
 
 The collection of tertiary shells from which those descrip 
 tions and beautiful figures were taken is almost unexampled 
 for the fine state of preservation of the specimens, and the 
 care with which all the varieties have been compared. It is 
 now admitted that about one third of these Miocene forms, 
 univalves and bivalves included, agree specifically with living 
 mollusca, so that much more than the enormous interval 
 which divides the Miocene from the Eecent period must be 
 taken into our account when we speculate on the origin by 
 transmutation of the shells now living, and the disappear 
 ance by extinction of intermediate varieties and species. 
 
CHAP. xxii. FOSSILS OF OENINGHEN. 431 
 
 Miocene Plants and Insects related to recent Species. 
 
 Geologists were acquainted with about three hundred 
 species of marine shells from the ( Falunian ' strata on the 
 banks of the Loire, before they knew anything of the contem 
 porary insects and ' plants. At length, as if to warn us 
 against inferring from negative evidence the poverty of 
 any ancient set of strata in organic remains proper to the 
 land, a rich flora and entomological fauna was suddenly 
 revealed to us characteristic of Central Europe during the 
 Upper Miocene period. This result followed the determina 
 tion of the true position of the Oeninghen beds in Switzerland, 
 and of certain formations of f Brown Coal ' in Germany. 
 
 Professor Heer, who has described nearly five hundred 
 species of fossil plants from Oeninghen, besides many more 
 from other Miocene localities in Switzerland,* estimates 
 the phenogamous species, which must have flourished in 
 Central Europe at that time, at 3,000, and the insects as 
 having been more numerous in the same proportion as they 
 now exceed the plants in all latitudes. This European 
 Miocene flora was remarkable for the preponderance of arbo 
 rescent and shrubby evergreens, and comprised many generic 
 types no longer associated together in any existing flora or 
 geographical province. Some genera, for example, which 
 are at present restricted to America, coexisted in Switzer 
 land with forms now peculiar to Asia, and with others at 
 present confined to Australia. 
 
 Professor Heer has not ventured to identify any of this 
 vast assemblage of Miocene plants and insects with living 
 species, so far at least as to assign to them the same specific 
 names, but he presents us with a list of what he terms 
 
 * Heer, Flora tertiana Helvetise, 1859 ; and Gaudin's French translation, 
 with additions, 1861. 
 
432 MIOCENE PLANTS AND INSECTS CHAP. xxn. 
 
 homologous forms, which are so like the living ones, that he 
 supposes the one to have been derived genealogically from 
 the others. He hesitates indeed as to the ' manner of the 
 transformation, or the precise nature of the relationship, 
 " whether the changes were brought about by some influence 
 exerted continually for ages, or whether at some given 
 moment the old types were struck with a new image." 
 
 Among the homologous plants alluded to are forty species, 
 of which both the leaves and fruits are preserved, and thirty 
 others, known at present by their leaves only. In the first 
 list we find many American types, such as the tulip tree, 
 Liriodendron, the deciduous cypress, Taxodium, the red 
 maple, and others, together with Japanese forms, such as the 
 cinnamon, which is very abundant. And what is worthy of 
 notice, some of these fossils so closely allied to living plants 
 occur not only in the Upper, but even some few of them as 
 far back in time as the Lower Miocene formations of Switzer 
 land and Germany, which are probably as distant from the 
 Upper Miocene or Oeninghen beds as are the latter from our 
 own era. 
 
 Some of the fossil plants to which Professor Heer has 
 given new names have been regarded as recent species by 
 other eminent naturalists. Thus, Unger had called one of 
 the trees allied to the elm, Planera Richardi, a species 
 which now flourishes in the United States. Professor Heer 
 had attempted to distinguish it from the living tree by the 
 greater size of its fruit, but this character he confessed did 
 not hold good, when he had an opportunity (1861) of com 
 paring all the varieties of the living Planera Richardi 
 which Dr. Hooker laid before him in the rich herbarium 
 of Kew. 
 
 As to the ( homologous insects' of the Upper Miocene 
 period in Switzerland, we find among them, mingled with 
 genera and orders now wholly foreign to Europe, some very 
 
CHAP. xxn. BELATED TO EECENT SPECIES. 433 
 
 familiar forms such as the common glowworm, Lampyris 
 noctiluca, Linn., the dung-beetle, Geotrupie stercorarius, 
 Linn., the ladybird, Coccinella septempunctata, Linn., the 
 earwig, Forficula auricularia, Linn., some of our common 
 dragon-flies, as Libellula depressa, Linn., the honey-bee, 
 Apis mellifera, Linn., the cuckoo spittle insect, Aphrophora, 
 spumaria, Linn., and a long catalogue of others, to all of 
 which Professor Heer has given new names, but which some 
 entomologists may regard as mere varieties until some 
 stronger reasons are adduced for coming to a contrary 
 opinion. 
 
 Several of the insects above enumerated, like the com 
 mon ladybird, are well known at present to have a very wide 
 range, over nearly the whole of the Old World, for example, 
 without varying, and might, therefore, be expected to have 
 been persistent throughout many successive changes of the 
 earth's surface and climate. Yet we may fairly anticipate 
 that even the most constant types will have undergone some 
 modifications in passing from the Miocene to the Recent 
 epoch, since in the former period the geography and climate 
 of Europe, the height of the Alps, and the general fauna and 
 flora were so different from what they now are. But the 
 deviation may not exceed that which would generally be 
 expressed by what is called, a well-marked variety. 
 
 Before I pass on to another topic, it may be well to answer 
 a question which may have occurred to the reader ; how it 
 happens that we remained so long igno'rant of the vegetation 
 and insects of the Upper Miocene period in Europe ? The 
 answer may be instructive to those who are in the habit of un 
 derrating the former richness of the organic world wherever 
 they happen to have no evidence of its condition. A large part 
 of the Upper Miocene insects and plants alluded to have been 
 met with at Oeninghen, near the Lake of Constance, in two or 
 three spots embedded in thinly laminated marls, the entire 
 
 F F 
 
434 VARIETIES OF SPECIES OP INSECTS CHAP. xxn. 
 
 thickness of which scarcely exceeds three or four feet, and in 
 two quarries of very limited dimensions. The rare combination 
 of causes which seems to have led to the faithful preservation 
 of so many treasures of a perishable nature in so small an 
 area, appear to have been the following : first, a river flowing 
 into a lake ; secondly, storms of wind, by which leaves, and 
 sometimes the boughs of trees, were torn off, and floated by 
 the stream into the lake ; thirdly, mephitic gases rising from 
 the lake, by which insects flying over its surface were occasion 
 ally killed : and fourthly, a constant supply of carbonate of lime 
 in solution from mineral springs, the calcareous matter, when 
 precipitated to the bottom, mingling with fine mud, and thus 
 forming the fossiliferous marls. 
 
 Species of Insects in Britain and North America, repre 
 sented by distinct Varieties. 
 
 If we compare the living British insects with those of the 
 American continent, we frequently find that even those 
 species which are considered to be identical, are, neverthe 
 less, varieties of the European types. I have noticed this 
 fact when speaking of the common English butterfly, Vanessa 
 atalanta, or 6 red admirable,' which I saw flying about the 
 woods of Alabama in mid winter. I was unable to detect 
 any difference myself, but all the American specimens which 
 I took to the British Museum were observed by Mr. Double- 
 day to exhibit a slight peculiarity in the colouring of a 
 minute part of the anterior wing,* a character first detected 
 by Mr. T. F. Stephens, who has also discovered that similar 
 slight, but equally constant variations, distinguish other lepi- 
 doptera now inhabiting the opposite sides of the Atlantic, 
 insects which, nevertheless, he and Mr. Westwood and the 
 
 * LyelTs_Second Visit to the United States, vol. ii. p. 293. 
 
CHAP. xxn. IN BRITAIN AND NORTH AMERICA. 435 
 
 late Mr. Kirby, have always agreed to regard as mere 
 varieties of tlie same species. 
 
 Mr. T. V. Wollaston, in treating of the variation of insects 
 in maritime situations and small islands, has shown how the 
 colour, growth of the wings, and many other characters, 
 undergo modification under the influence of local conditions, 
 continued for long periods of time ; * and Mr. Brown has lately 
 called our attention to the fact, that the insects of the Shet 
 land Isles present slight deviations from the corresponding 
 types occurring in Great Britain, but far less marked than 
 those which distinguish the American from the European 
 varieties.! In the case of Shetland, Mr. Brown remarks, a 
 land communication may well be supposed to have prevailed 
 with Scotland at a more modern era than that between 
 Europe and America. In fact, we have seen that Shetland 
 can hardly fail to have Been united with Scotland after the 
 commencement of the glacial period (see map, p. 279); 
 whereas a communication between the north of Europe by 
 Iceland and Greenland (which as before stated, once enjoyed 
 a genial climate), must have been anterior to the glacial 
 epoch. A much larger isolation, and the impossibility of 
 varieties formed in the two separated areas crossing with each 
 other, would account, according to Mr. Darwin's theory, for 
 the much wider divergence observed in the specific types of 
 the two regions. 
 
 The reader will remember that at the commencement of the 
 Glacial Period there was scarcely any appreciable difference 
 between the molluscous fauna and that now living. When 
 therefore the events of the Glacial Period, as described in the 
 earlier part of this volume are duly pondered on, and when we 
 reflect that in the Upper Miocene period the living species of 
 mollusca constitute only one third of the whole fauna, we see 
 
 * Wollaston, On the Variation of f Transactions of Northern Entomo- 
 Species,&c. London, Van Voorst, 1856. logical Society, 1862. 
 
 F F 2 
 
436 RECENT AND FOSSIL MAMMALIA. CHAP. xxn. 
 
 clearly by how high a figure we must multiply the time in 
 order to express the distance between the Miocene Period 
 and our own days. 
 
 Species of Mammalia recent and fossil. Proboscidians. 
 
 But it may perhaps be said that the mammalia afford more 
 conspicuous examples than do the mollusca, insects, or plants 
 of the wide gaps which separate species and genera, and 
 that if in this higher class such a multitude of transitional 
 forms had ever existed as would be required to unite the ter 
 tiary and recent species into one series or net-work of allied 
 or transitional forms, they could not so entirely have es 
 caped observation, whether in the fossil or living fauna. A 
 zoologist who entertains such an opinion would do well to 
 devote himself to the study of some one genus of mammalia, 
 such as the elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, bear, horse, 
 ox, or deer ; and after collecting all the materials he can 
 get together respecting the extinct and recent species, 
 decide for himself whether the present state of science 
 justifies his assuming that the chain could never have 
 been continuous, the number of the missing links being so 
 great. 
 
 Among the extinct species formerly contemporary with 
 man, no fossil quadruped* has so often been alluded to in this 
 work as the mammoth, Elephas primigenius. From a mono 
 graph on the proboscidians by Dr. Falconer, it appears that this 
 species represents one extreme of a type of which the Pliocene 
 Mastodon Borsoni represents the other. Between these 
 extremes there are already enumerated by Dr. Falconer no 
 less than twenty-six species, some of them ranging as far 
 back in time as the Miocene period, others still living, like 
 the Indian and African forms. Two of these species, how 
 ever, he has always considered as doubtful, Stegodon Ganesa, 
 
CHAP. xxn. PROBOSCIDIANS. 437 
 
 probably a mere variety of one of the others, and Elephas 
 priscus of Goldfuss, founded partly on specimens of the 
 African elephant, assumed by mistake to be fossil, and partly 
 on some aberrant forms of K antiquus. 
 
 The first effect of the intercalation of so many interme 
 diate forms between the two most divergent types, has been 
 to break down almost entirely the generic distinction between 
 Mastodon and Elephant. Dr. Falconer, indeed, observes that 
 Stegodon (one of several subgenera which he has founded) 
 constitutes an intermediate group, from which the other 
 species diverge through their dental characters, on the one 
 side into the Mastodons, and on the other into the 
 Elephants.* The next result is to dimmish the distance 
 between the several members of each of these groups. 
 
 Dr. Falconer has discovered that no less than four species 
 of elephant were formerly confounded together under the 
 title of Elephas primigenius, whence its supposed ubiquity 
 in post-pliocene times, or its wide range over half the 
 habitable globe. But even when this form has been thus 
 restricted in its specific characters, it has still its geographical 
 varieties ; for the mammoth's teeth brought from America 
 may in most instances, according to Dr. Falconer, be distin 
 guished from those proper to Europe. On this American 
 variety Dr. Leidy has conferred the name of E. Americanus. 
 Another race of the same mammoth (as determined by 
 Dr. Falconer) existed, as we have seen, before the glacial 
 period, or at the time when the buried forest of Cromer and 
 the Norfolk cliffs (see above, p. 216) was deposited ; and the 
 Swiss geologists have lately found remains of the mammoth 
 in their country, both in pre-glacial and post-glacial form 
 ations. 
 
 Since the publication of Dr. Falconer's monograph, two other 
 
 * Geological Quarterly Journal, vol. xiii. p. 314, 1857. 
 
438 DIFFICULTY OF DISCRIMINATING SPECIES. CHAP. xxii. 
 
 species of elephant, E. mirificus, Leidy, and E. imperator, 
 have been obtained from the Pliocene formations of the 
 Niobrara Valley in Nebraska, t one of which, however, may 
 possibly be found hereafter to be the same as E. Columbi, 
 Falc. A remarkable dwarf species also (Eleplias Melitensis) 
 has been discovered, belonging, like the existing E. Afri- 
 canus, to the group Loxodon. This species has been esta 
 blished by Dr. Falconer on remains found by Captain 
 Spratt, E.K, in a cave in Malta.* 
 
 How much the difficulty of discriminating between the 
 fossil representatives of this genus may hereafter augment, 
 when all the species with their respective geographical 
 varieties are known, may be inferred from the following 
 fact : Professor H. Schlegel, in a recently published memoir, 
 endeavours to show that the living elephant of Sumatra 
 agrees with that of Geylon, but is a distinct species from that 
 of Continental India, being distinguishable by the number 
 of its dorsal vertebrae and ribs, the form of its teeth, and 
 other characteristics.! Dr. Falconer, on the other hand, 
 considers these two living species as mere geographical 
 varieties, the characters referred to not being constant, as 
 he has ascertained, on comparing different individuals of 
 E. Indicus in different parts of Bengal (in which the ribs 
 vary from nineteen to twenty), and different varieties of 
 E. Africanus, 
 
 An enquiry into the various species of the genus Rhino 
 ceros, recent and fossil, has led Dr. Falconer to analogous 
 results, as might be inferred from what was said in 
 Chapter X. (p. 173), and as a forthcoming memoir by 
 the same writer will soon more fully demonstrate. 
 
 Among the fossils brought in 1858 by Mr. Hayden from 
 
 * Proceedings of the Geological f Schlegel, Natural Historical Ee- 
 Society, London, 1862-, view, No. 5, p. 72, 1862. 
 
CHAP. xxn. FOSSIL EQUINE SPECIES IN AMERICA. 439 
 
 the Niobrara Valley, Dr. Leidy describes a rhinoceros so like 
 the Asiatic species, R. Indicus, that he at first referred it to 
 the same, and, what is most singular, he remarks generally of 
 the Pliocene fauna of that part of North America, that it is 
 far more related in character to the post-pliocene and recent 
 fauna of Europe than to that now inhabiting the American 
 continent. 
 
 It seems indeed more and more evident that when we 
 speculate in future on the pedigree of any extinct quadruped 
 which abounds in the drift or caverns of Europe, we shall 
 have to look to North and South America as a principal 
 source of information. Thirty years ago, if we had been search 
 ing for fossil types which might fill up a gap between two 
 species or genera of the horse tribe (or great family of the 
 Solipedes), we might have thought it sufficient to have got 
 together as ample materials as we could obtain from the 
 continents of Europe, Africa, and Asia. We might have pre 
 sumed that as no living representative of the equine famity, 
 whether horse, ass, zebra, or quagga, had been furnished 
 by North or South America when those regions were first 
 explored by Europeans, a search in the transatlantic world for 
 fossil species might be dispensed with. But how different 
 is the prospect now opening before us ! Mr. Darwin first 
 detected the remains of a fossil horse during his visit to 
 South America, since which two other species have been met 
 with on the same continent, while in North America, in the 
 valley of the Nebraska alone, Mr. Hayden, besides a species 
 not distinguishable from the domestic horse, has obtained, ac 
 cording to Dr. Leidy, representatives of five other fossil genera 
 of Solipedes. These he names, Hipparion, Protohippus, Mery- 
 chippus, Hypohippus, and Parahippus. On the whole, no less 
 than twelve equine species, belonging to seven genera (includ 
 ing the Miocene Anchitherium of Nebraska), being already 
 
440 SUPPOSED ATLANTIC CONTINENT. CHAP. xxn. 
 
 detected in the tertiary and post-tertiary formations of the 
 United States** 
 
 Professors linger f and Heer J have advocated, on botanical 
 grounds, the former existence of an Atlantic continent during 
 some part of the tertiary period, as affording the only plausible 
 explanation that can be imagined, of the analogy between 
 the Miocene flora of Central Europe and the existing flora of 
 Eastern America. Professor Oliver, on the other hand, after 
 showing how many of the American types found fossil in 
 Europe are common to Japan, inclines to the theory, first 
 advanced by Dr. Asa Gray, that the migration of species, to 
 which the community of types in the Eastern States of North 
 America and the Miocene flora of Europe is due, took place 
 when there was an overland communication from America to 
 Eastern Asia between the fiftieth and sixtieth parallels of 
 latitude, or south of Behring's Straits, following the direction 
 of the Aleutian islands. By this course they may have 
 made their way, at any epoch, Miocene, Pliocene, or Post- 
 pliocene, antecedently to the Grlacial epoch, to Amoorland, on 
 the east coast of Northern Asia. 
 
 We have already seen (p. 158) that the living quadrupeds 
 of Amoorland are now nearly all specifically identical with 
 those at present inhabiting the continent of Western Europe 
 and the British Isles. 
 
 A monograph on the hippopotamus, bear, ox, stag, or any 
 other genus of mammalia common in the European drift or 
 caverns, might equally well illustrate the defective state of 
 the materials at present at our command. We are rarely in 
 possession of one perfect skeleton of any extinct species, 
 still less of skeletons of both sexes, and of different ages. 
 
 * Proceedings of Academy of Natu- j Flora tertiaria Helvetiae/ 
 
 ral Science, Philadelphia, for 1858, Oliver, Lecture at the Koyal In- 
 
 p. 89. % Btitution, March 7, 1862. 
 
 f Die versunkene Insel Atlantis. 
 
CHAP. xxii. LONGEVITY OF SPECIES IN MAMMALIA. 441 
 
 We usually know nothing of the geographical varieties of the 
 post-pliocene and pliocene species, least of all, those successive 
 changes of form which they must have undergone in the pre- 
 glacial epoch between the upper miocene and post-pliocene 
 eras. Such being the poverty of our palseontological data, 
 we cannot wonder that osteologists are at variance as to 
 whether certain remains found in caverns are of the same 
 species as those now living ; whether, for example, the Talpa 
 fossilis is really the common mole, the Meles morreni the 
 common badger, Lutra antiqua the otter of Europe, Sciurus 
 priscus the squirrel, Arctomys primigenia the marmot, 
 Myoxus fossilis the dormouse, Schmerling's Felix Engihou- 
 lensis the European lynx, or whether Ursus spelceus and 
 Ursus priscus are not extinct races of the living brown bear 
 ( Ursus arctos). t 
 
 If at some future period all the above-mentioned species 
 should be united with their allied congeners, it cannot fail to 
 enlarge our conception of the modifications which a species 
 is capable of undergoing in the course of time, although the 
 same form may appear absolutely immutable within the 
 narrow range of our experience. 
 
 Longevity of Species in the Mammalia. 
 
 In the < Principles of Geology,' in 1833,* I stated that the 
 longevity of species in the class mollusca exceeded that in 
 the mammalia. It has been since found that this generalisa 
 tion can be carried much farther, and that, in fact, the law 
 which governs the changes in organic beings is such, that the 
 lower their place in a graduated scale, or the simpler their 
 structure, the more persistent are they in form and organisa 
 tion. I soon became aware of the force of this rule in 
 the class mollusca, when I first attempted to calculate the 
 
 * 1st edit., vol. iii. pp. 48 and 140. 
 
442 ' LONGEVITY OF SPECIES. CHAP. xxil. 
 
 numerical proportion of recent species in the newer pliocene 
 formations as compared to the older pliocene, and of them 
 again as contrasted with the miocene ; for it appeared invari 
 ably that a greater number of the acephala or lamelli- 
 branchiate bivalves could be identified with living species 
 than of the gasteropods, and of these last a greater number 
 in the lower division, that of entire-mouthed univalves, than 
 in that of the siphonated. In whatever manner the changes 
 have been brought about, whether by variation and natural 
 selection, or by any other causes, the rate of change has been 
 greater where the grade of organisation is higher. 
 
 It is only, therefore, where there is a full representation of 
 all the principal orders of mollusca, or when we compare 
 those of corresponding grade, that we can fully rely on the per 
 centage test, or on the proportion of recent to extinct species 
 as indicating the relation of two groups to the existing fauna. 
 
 The foraminifera which exemplify the lowest stage of 
 animal existence, being akin to the sponges, are extremely 
 persistent throughout vast periods of time in form and 
 structure, as the researches of Messrs, Jones and Parker have 
 lately shown. They exceed, in that respect, even the brachio- 
 podous mollusca before mentioned, 
 
 Dr. Hooker observes, in regard to plants of complex floral 
 structure, that they manifest their physical superiority in a 
 greater extent of variation, and in thus better securing a suc 
 cession of race, an attribute which in some senses he regards 
 as of a higher order than that indicated by mere complexity 
 or specialisation of organ.* 
 
 As one of the consequences of this law, he says that species, 
 genera, and orders are, on the whole, best limited in plants 
 of higher grade, the dicotyledons better than the monocoty 
 ledons, and the dichlamydese better than the achlamydese. 
 
 * Introductory Essay, &c., p. vii. 
 
'CHAP. xxn. ABSENCE OF MAMMALIA IN ISLANDS. 443 
 
 Mr. Darwin remarks, 'We can, perhaps, understand the 
 apparently quicker rate of change in terrestrial, and in more 
 highly organised productions, compared with marine and 
 lower productions, by the more complex relations of the 
 higher beings to their organic and inorganic conditions of 
 life.* 
 
 If we suppose the mammalia to be more sensitive than are 
 the inferior classes of the vertebrata, to every fluctuation in 
 the surrounding conditions, whether of the animate or inani 
 mate world, it would follow that they would oftener be called 
 upon to adapt themselves, by variation, to new conditions, or 
 if unable to do so, to give place to other types, This would 
 give rise to more frequent extinction of varieties, species, and 
 genera, whereby the surviving types would be better limited, 
 and the average duration of the same unaltered specific types 
 would be lessened. 
 
 Absence of Mammalia in Islands considered in Reference 
 to Transmutation. 
 
 But if mammalia vary, upon the whole, at a more rapid 
 rate than animals lower in the scale of being, it must not be 
 supposed that they can alter their habits and structures 
 readily, or that they are convertible in short periods into new 
 species. The extreme slowness with which such changes of 
 habits and organisation take place, when new conditions 
 arise, appears to be well exemplified by the absence even of 
 small warm-blooded quadrupeds in islands far from continents, 
 however well such islands may be fitted by their dimensions 
 to support them. 
 
 Mr. Darwin has pointed to this absence of mammalia as 
 favouring his views, observing that bats, which are the only 
 
 * Origin of Species, 3rd ed. p. 340. 
 
444 ABSENCE OF MAMMALIA IN ISLANDS. CHAP. xxn. 
 
 exceptions to the rule, might have made their way to distant 
 islands by flight, for they are often met with on the wing far 
 out at sea. Unquestionably, the total exclusion of quadru 
 peds in general, which could only reach such isolated habita 
 tions by swimming, seems to imply that nature does not 
 dispense with the ordinary laws of reproduction when she 
 peoples the earth with new forms ; for if causes purely imma 
 terial were alone at work, we might naturally look for squirrels, 
 rabbits, polecats, and other small vegetable feeders and 
 beasts of prey, as often as for bats, in the spots alluded to. 
 
 On the other hand, I have found it difficult to reconcile 
 the antiquity of certain islands, such as those of the Madeiran 
 Archipelago, and those of still larger size in the Canaries, 
 with the total absence of small indigenous quadrupeds, for, 
 judging by ancient deposits of littoral shells, now raised high 
 above the level of the sea, several of these volcanic islands 
 (Porto Santo and the Grand Canary among others), must 
 have existed ever since the Upper Mrocene period. But, 
 waiving all such claims to antiquity, it is at least certain 
 that since the close of the Newer Pliocene period, Madeira 
 and Porto Santo have constituted two separate islands, each 
 in sight of the other, and each inhabited by an assemblage of 
 land shells (helix, pupa, clausiliay &c.), for the most part 
 different or proper to each island. About thirty-two fossil 
 species have been obtained in Madeira, and forty-two in 
 Porto Santo, only five of the whole being common to both 
 islands. In each the living land-shells are equally distinct, and 
 correspond, for the most part, with the species found fossil in 
 each island respectively. 
 
 Among the seventy-two species, two or three appear to be 
 entirely extinct, and a larger number have disappeared from 
 the fauna of the Madeiran Archipelago, though still extant in 
 Africa and Europe. Many which were amongst the most 
 common in the Newer Pliocene period, have now become the 
 
CHAP. xxil. CONSIDERED WITH REFERENCE TO TRANSMUTATION. 445 
 
 scarcest, and others formerly scarce, are now most numerously 
 represented. The variety-making force has been at work 
 with such energy, perhaps we ought to say, has had so much 
 time for its development, that almost every isolated rock 
 within gun-shot of the shores has its peculiar living forms, or 
 those very marked races to which Mr. Lowe, in his excellent 
 description of the fauna, has given the name of f sub-species.' 
 Since the fossil shells were embedded in sand near the 
 coast, these volcanic islands have undergone considerable 
 alterations in size and shape by the wasting action of the 
 waves of the Atlantic beating incessantly against the cliffs, so 
 that the evidence of a vast lapse oftime is derivable from 
 inorganic as well as from organic phenomena. 
 
 During this period no mammalia, not even of small species, 
 excepting bats, have made their appearance, whether in 
 Madeira and Porto-Santo or in the larger and more numerous 
 islands of the Canarian group. It might have been expected, 
 from some expressions met with here and there in the " Origin 
 of Species," though not perhaps from a fair interpretation of 
 tlie whole tenor of the author's reasoning, that this dearth of the 
 highest class of vertebrata is inconsistent with the powers of 
 mammalia to accommodate their habits and structures to new 
 conditions. Why did not some of the bats, for example, after 
 they had greatly multiplied, and were hard pressed by a 
 scarcity of insects on the wing, betake themselves to the 
 ground in search of prey, and, gradually losing their wings, 
 become transformed into non-volant insectivora ? Mr. Darwin 
 tells me that he has learnt that there is a bat in India which 
 has been known occasionally to devour frogs. One might also 
 be tempted to ask, how it has happened that the seals which 
 swarmed on the shores of Madeira and the Canaries, before the 
 European colonists arrived there, were never induced, when 
 food was scarce in the sea, to venture inland from the shores, 
 and begin in Teneriffe, and the Grand Canary especially, and 
 
446 ARGUMENTS FOR AND AGAINST CHAP. xxn. 
 
 other large islands, to acquire terrestrial habits, venturing first 
 a few yards inland, and then farther and farther until they 
 began to occupy some of those " places left vacant in the 
 economy of nature." During these excursions, we might 
 suppose some varieties, which had the skin of the webbed 
 intervals of their toes less developed, to succeed best in walk 
 ing on the land, and in the course of several generations they 
 might exchange their present gait or manner of shuffling 
 along and jumping by aid of the tail and their fin-like ex 
 tremities, for feet better adapted for running. 
 
 It is said that one of the bats in the island of Palma (one 
 of the Canaries) is of a peculiar species, and that some of the 
 Cheiroptera of the Pacific islands (or Oceanica) are even of 
 peculiar genera. If so, we seem, on organic as well as on 
 geological grounds, to be precluded from arguing that there 
 has not been time for great divergence of character. We 
 seem also entitled to ask why the bats and rodents of 
 Australia, which are spread so widely among the marsupials 
 over that continent, have never, under the influence of the 
 principle of progression, been developed into the higher or 
 placental type, since we have now ascertained that that 
 continent was by no means unfitted to sustain such mammalia, 
 for these, when once introduced by man, have run wild and 
 become naturalised in many parts. The following answers 
 may perhaps be offered to the above criticisms of some of 
 Mr. Darwin's theoretical views. 
 
 First, as to the bats and seals : they are what zoologists 
 call aberrant and highly specialised types, and therefore 
 precisely those which might be expected to display a fixity, 
 and want of pliancy in their organisation, or the smallest pos 
 sible aptitude for deviating in new directions towards new 
 structures, and the acquisition of such altered habits as a 
 change from aquatic to terrestrial or from volant to non- 
 volant modes of living would imply. 
 
CHAP. xxii. TRANSMUTATION. 447 
 
 Secondly, the same powers of flight which enabled the first 
 bats to reach Madeira or the Canaries, would bring others 
 from time to time from the African continent, which, mixing 
 with the first emigrants and crossing with them, would check 
 the formation of new races, or keep them true to the old 
 types, as is found to be actually the case with the birds of 
 Madeira and the Bermudas. 
 
 This would happen the more surely, if, as Mr. Darwin has 
 endeavoured to prove, the offspring of races slightly varying 
 are usually more vigorous than the progeny of parents of 
 the same race, and would be more prolific, therefore, than the 
 insular stock which had been for a long time breeding in 
 and in. 
 
 The same cause would tend in a still more decided manner 
 to prevent the seals from diverging into new races or ( incipient 
 species,' because they range freely over the wide ocean, and, 
 may therefore have continual intercourse with all other indi 
 viduals of their species. 
 
 Thirdly, as to peculiar species, and even genera of bats 
 in islands, we are perhaps too little acquainted at present 
 with all the species and genera of the neighbouring continents 
 to be able to affirm, with any degree of confidence, that the 
 forms supposed to be peculiar do not exist elsewhere : those 
 of the Canaries in Africa, for example. But what is still 
 more important, we must bear in mind how many species 
 and genera of post-pliocene mammalia have ever}^ where 
 become extinct by causes independent of Man. It is always 
 possible, therefore, that some types of cheiroptera, originally 
 derived from the main land, have survived in islands, although 
 they have gradually died out on the continents from whence 
 they came ; so that it would be rash to infer that there has 
 been time for the creation, whether by variation or other 
 agency, of new species or genera in the islands in question. 
 
 As to the rodents and cheiroptera of Australia, we are as 
 
448 IMPEKFECTION OF THE GEOLOGICAL RECORD. CHAP. xxn. 
 
 yet too ignorant of the post-pliocene and newer pliocene 
 fauna of that part of the world, to be able to decide whether 
 the introduction of such forms dates from a remote geological 
 time. We know, however, that, before the recent period, that 
 continent was peopled with large kangaroos, and other her 
 bivorous, and carnivorous marsupials, of species long since 
 extinct, their remains having been discovered in ossiferous 
 caverns. The preoccupaney of the country by such indigenous 
 tribes may have checked the development of the placental 
 rodents and cheiroptera, even were we to concede the pos 
 sibility of such forms being convertible by variation and 
 progressive development into higher grades of mammalia. 
 
 Imperfection of the geological record, 
 
 When treating in the 8th Chapter * of the dearth of human 
 bones in alluvium containing flint implements in abundance, 
 I pointed out that it is not part of the plan of Nature to write 
 everywhere, and at all times, her autobiographical memoirs. 
 On the contrary, her annals are local and exceptional from 
 the first, and portions of them are afterwards ground into 
 mud, sand, and pebbles, to furnish materials for new strata. 
 Even of those ancient monuments now forming the crust of 
 the earth, which have not been destroyed by rivers and the 
 waves of the sea, or which have escaped being melted by 
 volcanic heat, three-fourths lie submerged beneath the ocean, 
 and are inaccessible to man ; while of those which form the 
 dry land, a great part are hidden for ever from our observa 
 tion by mountain masses, thousands of feet thick, piled over 
 them. 
 
 Mr, Darwin has truly said that the fossiliferous rocks 
 known to geologists consist, for the most part, of such as 
 
 * Page 144 to 149. 
 
CHAP. xxn. INTERCALATION OF NEWLY DISCOVERED FORMATION. 449 
 
 were formed when the bottom of the sea was subsiding. 
 This downward movement protects the new deposits from 
 denudation, and allows them to accumulate to a great thick 
 ness ; whereas sedimentary ma.tter, thrown down where the 
 sea-bottom is rising, must almost invariably be swept away 
 by the waves as fast as the land emerges. 
 
 When we reflect, therefore, on the fractional state of the 
 annals which are handed down to us, and how little even these 
 have as yet been studied, we may wonder that so many geo 
 logists should attribute every break in the series of strata, 
 and every gap in the past history of the organic world, to 
 catastrophes and convulsions of the earth's crust, or to leaps 
 made by the creational force from species to species, or from 
 class to class. For it is clear that, even had the series of 
 monuments been perfect and continuous at first (an hypo 
 thesis quite opposed to the analogy of the working of causes 
 now in action), it could not fail to present itself to our eyes 
 in a broken and disconnected state. 
 
 Those geologists who have watched the progress of dis 
 covery during the last half century, can best appreciate the 
 extent to which we may still hope by future exertion to fill 
 up some of the wider chasms which now interrupt the 
 regular sequence of fossiliferous rocks. The determination, 
 for example, of late years of the true place of the Hallstadt 
 and St. Cassian beds on the N. and S. flanks of the Austrian 
 Alps, has revealed to us, for the first time, the marine fauna 
 of a period (that of the Upper Trias) of which, until lately, 
 but little was known. In this case, the palaeontologist is called 
 upon suddenly to intercalate about 800 species of mollusca 
 and radiata, between the fauna of the Lower Lias and that of 
 the Middle Trias. The period in question was previously 
 believed, even by many a philosophical geologist, to have been 
 comparatively barren of organic types. In England, France, 
 and Northern Germany, the only known strata of Upper 
 
 G G 
 
450 FEATHERED ARCH^OPTEEYX OF THE OOLITE. CHAP. xxir. 
 
 Triassic date had consisted almost entirely of fresh or 
 brackish-water beds, in which the bones of terrestrial and 
 amphibious reptiles were the most characteristic fossils. 
 The new fauna was, as might have been expected, in part 
 peculiar, not a few of the species of mollusca being referable 
 to new genera ; while some species were common to the 
 older, and some to the newer rocks. On the whole, the new 
 forms have helped greatly to lessen the discordance, not only 
 between the lias and trias, but also generally between paleo 
 zoic and neozoic formations. Thus the genus Orthoceras has 
 been for the first time recognised in a neozoic deposit, and 
 with it we find associated, for the first time, large ammonites 
 with foliated lobes, a form never seen before below the lias ; 
 also the Ceratite, a family of cephalopods never before met 
 with above the muschelkalk or middle trias, and never before 
 in the same stratum with such lobed ammonites. 
 
 We can now no longer doubt, that should we hereafter have 
 an opportunity of studying an equally rich marine fauna of 
 the age of the lower trias (or bunter sandstein), the marked 
 hiatus which still separates the Triassic and Permian eras 
 would almost disappear. , * 
 
 Archceopteryx macrurus, Owen. I could readily add a 
 copious list of minor deposits, belonging to the primary, 
 secondary, and tertiary series, which we have been called 
 upon in like manner to intercalate in the course of the 
 last quarter of a century into the chronological series pre 
 viously known ; but it would lead me into too long a digres 
 sion. I shall therefore content myself with pointing out 
 that it is not simply new formations which are brought 
 to light from year to year, reminding us of the elementary 
 state of our knowledge of paleontology, but new types also 
 of structure are discovered in rocks, the fossil contents of 
 which were supposed to be peculiarly well known. 
 
CHAP. xxii. FEATHERED ARCILEOPTEIIYX OF THE OOLITE. 451 
 
 The last and most striking of these novelties is c the 
 feathered fossil' from the lithographic stone of Solon- -/ Ap* M J 
 hofen. 
 
 Until the year 1858, no well-determined skeleton of a bird 
 had been detected in any rocks older than the tertiary. In 
 that year, Mr. Lucas Barrett found in the upper greensand 
 of the cretaceous series, near Cambridge, the femur, tibia, 
 and some other bones of a swimming bird, supposed by him 
 to be of the gull tribe. His opinion as to the ornithic 
 character of the remains was afterwards confirmed by 
 Professor Owen. 
 
 The Archceopteryx macrurus, Owen, recently acquired by 
 the British Museum, affords a second example of the dis 
 covery of the osseous remains of a bird in strata older than 
 the Eocene. It was found in, the great quarries of litho 
 graphic limestone at Pappenheim, near Solenhofen in 
 Bavaria, the rock being a member of the Upper Oolite. 
 
 It was at first conjectured in Germany, before any ex 
 perienced osteologist had had an opportunity of inspecting 
 the original specimen, that this fossil might be a feathered 
 pterodactyl, (flying reptiles having been often met with in 
 the same stratum,) or that it might at least supply some 
 connecting links between a reptile and a bird. But Pro 
 fessor Owen, in a memoir lately read to the Eoyal Society, 
 (November 20, 1862,) has shown that it is unequivocally a 
 bird, and that such of its characters as are abnormal are by 
 no means strikingly reptilian. The skeleton was lying on 
 its back when embedded in calcareous sediment, so that the 
 ventral part is exposed to view. It is about one foot eight 
 inches long, and one foot four across, from the apex of the 
 right to that of the left wing. The furculum, or merry 
 thought, which is entire, marks the fore part of the trunk ; 
 the ischium, scapula, and most of the wing and leg bones 
 are preserved, and there are impressions of the quill feathers 
 
 G G 2 
 
452 FEATHERED ARCILEOPTERYX OF THE OOLITE. CHAP. xxn. 
 
 and of down on the body. The veins and shafts of the fea 
 thers can be seen by the naked eye. Fourteen long quill 
 feathers diverge on each side of the metacarpal and phalangial 
 bones, and decrease in length from six inches to one inch. 
 The wings have a general resemblance to those of gallinaceous 
 birds. The tarso-metatarsal, or drumstick, exhibits at its 
 distal end a trifid articular surface supporting three .toes, as 
 in birds. The furculum, pelvis, and bones of the tail are in 
 their natural position. The tail consists of twenty vertebrae, 
 each of which supports a pair ,of plumes. The length of the 
 tail with its feathers is eleven and a half inches, and its 
 breadth three and a half. It is obtusely truncated at the 
 end. In all living birds the tail-feathers are arranged in 
 fan-shaped order and attached to a coccygean bone, consisting 
 of several vertebrae united together, whereas in the embryo 
 state these same vertebrae are distinct. The greatest number 
 is seen in the ostrich, which has eighteen caudal vertebrae in 
 the foetal state, which are reduced to nine in the adult 
 bird, many of them having been anchylosed together. Pro 
 fessor Owen therefore considers the tail of the Archasopteryx 
 as exemplifying the persistency of what is now an embryonic 
 character. The tail, he remarks, is essentially a variable 
 character. There are long-tailed bats and short-tailed bats, 
 long-tailed rodents and short-tailed rodents, long-tailed 
 pterodactyls and short-tailed pterodactyls. 
 
 The Archseopteryx differs from all known birds, not only in 
 the structure of its tail, but in having two, if not three digits 
 in the hand ; but there is no trace of the fifth digit of the 
 winged reptile. 
 
 The conditions under which the skeleton occurs are such, 
 says Professor Owen, as to remind us of the carcass of a gull 
 which had been a prey to some Carnivore, which had re 
 moved all the soft parts, and perhaps the head, nothing 
 being left but the bony legs and the indigestible quill- 
 
CHAP. xxn. FEATHERED ARCH^EOPTERYX OF THE OOLITE. 453 
 
 feathers. But since Professor Owen's paper was read, Mr. 
 John Evans, whom I have often had occasion to mention in 
 the earlier chapters of this work, seems to have found what 
 may indicate a part of the missing cranium. He has called 
 our attention to a smooth protuberance on the otherwise even 
 surface of the slab of limestone which seems to be the cast of 
 the brain or interior of the skull. Some part even of the 
 cranial bone itself appears to be still buried in the matrix. 
 Mr. Evans has pointed out the resemblance of this cast to 
 one taken by himself from the cranium of a crow, and still 
 more to that of a jay, observing that in the fossil the median 
 line which separates the two hemispheres of the brain is 
 visible. 
 
 To conclude, we may learn from this valuable relic how 
 rashly the existence of Birds at the epoch of the Secondary 
 rocks has been questioned, simply on negative evidence, and 
 secondly, how many new forms may be expected to be brought 
 to light in strata with which we are already best acquainted, 
 to say nothing of the new formations which geologists are 
 continually discovering. 
 
 
454 ARYAN HYPOTHESIS AND CONTROVERSY. CHAP. xxm. 
 
 CHAPTEE XXIII. 
 
 ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGES AND SPECIES 
 COMPARED. 
 
 ARYAN HYPOTHESIS AND CONTROVERSY THE RACES OF MANKIND 
 
 CHANGE MORE SLOWLY THAN THEIR LANGUAGES THEORY OF THE 
 
 GRADUAL ORIGIN OF LANGUAGES DIFFICULTY OF DEFINING WHAT IS 
 MEANT BY A LANGUAGE AS DISTINCT FROM A DIALECT GREAT 
 NUMBER OF EXTINCT AND LIVING TONGUES NO EUROPEAN LANGUAGE 
 
 A THOUSAND YEARS OLD GAPS BETWEEN LANGUAGES, HOW CAUSED 
 
 IMPERFECTION OF THE RECORD CHANGES ALWAYS IN PROGRESS 
 
 STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE BETWEEN RIVAL TERMS AND DIALECTS 
 
 CAUSES OF SELECTION EACH LANGUAGE FORMED SLOWLY IN A SINGLE 
 
 GEOGRAPHICAL AREA MAY DIE OUT GRADUALLY OR SUDDENLY 
 
 ONCE LOST CAN NEVER BE REVIVED MODE OF ORIGIN OF LANGUAGES 
 
 AND SPECIES A MYSTERY SPECULATIONS AS TO THE NUMBER OF 
 ORIGINAL LANGUAGES OR SPECIES UNPROFITABLE. 
 
 THE supposed existence, at a remote and unknown period, 
 of a language conventionally called the Aryan, has of 
 late years been a favourite subject of speculation among 
 German philologists, and Professor Max Miiller has given us 
 lately the most improved version of this theory, and has set 
 forth the various facts and arguments by which it may be 
 defended, with his usual perspicuity and eloquence. He 
 observes that if we knew nothing of the existence of Latin, 
 if all historical documents previous to the fifteenth 
 century had been lost, if tradition even was silent as to the 
 former existence of a Roman empire, a mere comparison of 
 the Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Wallachian, and 
 RhaBtian dialects would enable us to say that at some time 
 there must have been a language, from which these six 
 modern dialects derive their origin in common. Without 
 
CHAP, xxiii. ARYAN HYPOTHESIS AND CONTROVERSY. 455 
 
 this supposition it would be impossible to account for their 
 structure and composition, as, for example, for the forms of 
 the auxiliary verb ( to be,' all evidently varieties of one 
 common type, while it is equally clear that no one of the six 
 affords the original form from which the others could have 
 been borrowed. So also in none of the six languages do we 
 find the elements of which these verbal and other forms 
 could have been composed ; they must have been handed 
 down as relics from a former period, they must have existed 
 in some antecedent language, which we know to have been 
 the Latin. 
 
 But, in like manner, he goes on to show, that Latin itself, 
 as well as Greek, Sanscrit, Zend (or Bactrian), Lithuanian, 
 old Sclavonic, Gothic, and Armenian are also eight varieties 
 of one common and more ancient type, and no one of them 
 could have been the original from which the others were 
 borrowed. They have all such an amount of mutual resem 
 blance, as to point to a more ancient language, the Aryan, 
 which was to them what Latin was to the six Romance 
 languages. The people who spoke this unknown parent 
 speech, of which so many other ancient tongues were off 
 shoots, must have migrated at a remote era to widely sepa 
 rated regions of the old world, such as Northern Asia, 
 Europe., and India south of the Himalaya.* 
 
 The soundness of some parts of this Aryan hypothesis has 
 lately been called in question by Mr, Crawfurd, on the 
 ground that the Hindoos, Persians, Turks, Scandinavians, 
 and other people referred to as having derived not only 
 words but grammatical forms from an Aryan source, belong 
 each of them to a distinct race, and all these races have, it is 
 said, preserved their peculiar characters unaltered from the 
 earliest dawn of history and tradition. If, therefore, no 
 
 * Max Miiller, Comparative Mythology. Oxford Essays, 1856. 
 
456 ARYAN HYPOTHESIS AND CONTROVERSY. CHAP. xxm. 
 
 appreciable change has occurred in three or four thousand 
 years, we should be obliged to assume a far more remote date 
 for the first branching off of such races from a common stock 
 than the supposed period of the Aryan migrations, and the 
 dispersion of that language over many and distant countries. 
 
 But Mr. Crawfurd haSj I think, himself helped us to 
 remove this stumbling-block, by admitting that a nation 
 speaking a language allied to the Sanscrit (the oldest of the 
 eight tongues alluded to), once probably inhabited that 
 region situated to the north-west of India, which within the 
 period of authentic history has poured out its conquering 
 hordes over a great extent of Western Asia and Eastern 
 Europe. The same people, he says, may have acted the 
 same part in the long, dark night which preceded the dawn 
 of tradition** These conquerors may have been few in 
 number when compared to the populations which they 
 subdued. In such cases the new settlers, although reckoned 
 by tens of thousands, might merge in a few centuries into the 
 millions of subjects which they ruled. It is an acknowledged 
 fact, that the colour and features of the Negro or European are 
 entirely lost in the fourth generation, provided that no fresh 
 infusion of one or other of the two races takes place. The 
 distinctive physical features, therefore, of the Aryan con 
 querors might soon wear out and be lost in those of the 
 nations they overran ; yet many of the words, and, what is 
 more in point, some of the grammatical forms of their lan 
 guage, might be retained by the masses which they had 
 governed for centuries, these masses continuing to preserve 
 the same features of race which had distinguished them long 
 before the Aryan invasions. 
 
 There can be no question that if we could trace back any 
 set of cognate languages now existing to some common point 
 
 * Crawfurd, Transactions of the Ethnological Society, vol. i. 1861. 
 
CHAP. xxm. RACES CHANGE MORE SLOWLY THAN LANGUAGES. 457 
 
 of departure, they would converge and meet sooner in some 
 era of the past than would the existing races of mankind ; 
 in other words, races change much more slowly than lan 
 guages. But, according to the doctrine of transmutation, to 
 form a new species would take an incomparably longer 
 period than to form a new race. No language seems ever 
 to last for a thousand years, whereas many a species seems to 
 have endured for hundreds of thousands. A philologist, there 
 fore, who is contending that all living languages are derivative 
 and not primordial, has a great advantage over a naturalist 
 who is endeavouring to inculcate a similar theory in regard 
 to species. 
 
 It may not be uninstructive, in order fairly to appreciate 
 the vast difficulty of the task of those who advocate trans 
 mutation in natural history, to consider how hard it would 
 be even for a philologist to succeed, if he should try to 
 convince an assemblage of intelligent but illiterate persons 
 that the language spoken by them, and all those talked by 
 contemporary nations, were modern inventions, moreover 
 that these same forms of speech were still constantly under 
 going change, and none of them destined to last for ever. 
 
 We will suppose him to begin by stating his conviction, 
 that the living languages have been gradually derived from 
 others now extinct, and spoken by nations which had imme 
 diately preceded them in the order of time, and that those 
 again had used forms of speech derived from still older ones. 
 They might naturally exclaim, ( How strange it is that you 
 should find records of a multitude of dead languages, that a 
 part of the human economy which in our own time is so 
 remarkable for its stability, should have been so inconstant in 
 bygone ages ! We all speak as our parents and grandparents 
 spoke before us, and so, we are told, do the Grermans and 
 French. What evidence is there of such incessant variation 
 in remoter times ? and, if it be true, why not imagine that 
 
458 DIFFICULTY OF DEFINING A LANGUAGE. CHAP. xxm. 
 
 when one form of speech was lost, another was suddenly and 
 supernaturally created by a gift of tongues or confusion of 
 languages, as at the building of the Tower of Babel ? Where 
 are the memorials of all the intermediate dialects which 
 must have existed, if this doctrine of perpetual fluctuation 
 be true ? And how comes it that the tongues now spoken 
 do not pass by insensible gradations the one into the other, 
 and into the dead languages of dates immediately antecedent ? 
 
 6 Lastly, if this theory of indefinite modifiability be sound, 
 what meaning can be attached to the term language, and 
 what definition can be given of it so as to distinguish a 
 language from a dialect ? ' 
 
 In reply to this last question, the philologist might confess 
 that the learned are not agreed as to what constitutes a lan 
 guage as distinct from a dialect. Some believe that there 
 are 4,000 living languages, others that there are 6,000, so 
 that the mode of defining them is clearly a mere matter of 
 opinion. Some contend, for example, that the Danish, 
 Norwegian, and Swedish form one Scandinavian tongue, 
 others that they constitute three different languages, others 
 that the Danish and Norwegian are one, mere dialects of the 
 same language, but that Swedish is distinct. 
 
 The philologist, however, might fairly argue that this very 
 ambiguity was greatly in favour of his doctrine, since if lan 
 guages had all been constantly undergoing transmutation, 
 there ought often to be a want of real lines of demarcation 
 between them. He might, however, propose that he and his 
 pupils should come to an understanding that two languages 
 should be regarded as distinct whenever the speakers of them 
 are unable to converse together, or freely to exchange ideas, 
 whether by word or writing. Scientifically speaking, such a 
 test might be vague and unsatisfactory, like the test of species 
 by their capability of producing fertile hybrids ; but if the 
 pupil is persuaded that there are such things in nature as 
 
CHAP. xxm. NO EUROPEAN LANGUAGE A THOUSAND TEAKS OLD. 459 
 
 distinct languages, whatever may have been their origin, 
 the definition above suggested might be of practical use, and 
 enable the teacher to proceed with his argument. 
 
 He might begin by undertaking to prove that none of the 
 languages of modern Europe were a thousand years old. 
 No English scholar, he might say, who has not specially 
 given himself up to the study of Anglo-Saxon, can interpret 
 the documents in which the chronicles and laws of England 
 were written in the days of King Alfred, so that we may be 
 sure that none of the English of the nineteenth century 
 could converse with the subjects of that monarch if these last 
 could now be restored to life. The difficulties encountered 
 would not arise merely from the intrusion of French terms, 
 in consequence of the Norman conquest, because that portion 
 of our language (nearly three-fourths of the whole) which is 
 Saxon has also undergone great transformations by abbrevia 
 tion, new modes of pronunciation, spelling, and various 
 corruptions, so as to be unlike both ancient and modern 
 German. They who now speak German, if brought into contact 
 with their Teutonic ancestors of the ninth century, would be 
 quite unable to converse with them, and, in like manner, the 
 subjects of Charlemagne could not have exchanged ideas with 
 the Goths of Alaric's army, or with the soldiers of Armimus 
 in the days of Augustus Csesar. So rapid indeed has been the 
 change in Germany, that the epic poem called the Nibelungen 
 Lied, once so popular, and only seven centuries .old, cannot 
 now be enjoyed, except by the erudite. 
 
 If we then turn to France, we meet again with similar 
 evidence of ceaseless change. Chevalier Pertz has printed a 
 treaty of peace a thousand years old, between Charles the' 
 Bald and King Louis of Germany (dated A.D. 841), in which 
 the German king takes an oath in what was the French 
 tongue of that day, while the French king swears in the 
 German of the same era, and neither of these oaths would now 
 
460 NUMBER OF EXTINCT AND LIVING LANGUAGES. CHAP. xxm. 
 
 convey a distinct meaning to any but the learned in these 
 two countries. So also in Italy, the modern Italian cannot 
 be traced back much beyond the time of Dante, or some six 
 centuries before our time. Even in Kome, where there had 
 been no permanent intrusion of foreigners, such as the 
 Lombard settlers of German origin in the plains of the Po, 
 the common people of the year 1000 spoke quite a distinct 
 language from that of their JRoman ancestors or their Italian 
 descendants, as- is shown by the celebrated chronicle of the 
 monk Benedict, of the convent of St. Andrea on Mount 
 Soracte, written in such barbarous Latin, and with such 
 strange grammatical forms, that it requires a profoundly 
 skilled linguist to decipher it-* 
 
 Having thus established the preliminary fact^ that none of 
 the tongues now spoken were in existence ten centuries ago, 
 and that the ancient languages have passed through many a 
 transitional dialect before they settled into the forms now in 
 use, the philologist might bring forward proofs of the great 
 numbers both of lost and living forms of speech. 
 
 Strabo informs us that in his time, in the Caucasus alone 
 (a chain of mountains not longer than the Alps, and much 
 narrower), there were spoken at least seventy languages. 
 At the present period the number, it is said, would be still 
 greater, if all the distinct dialects of those mountains were 
 reckoned. Several of these Caucasian tongues admit of no 
 comparison with any known living or lost Asiatic or European 
 language. Others which are not peculiar are obsolete forms 
 of known languages, such as the Georgian, Mongolian, Per 
 sian, Arabic, and Tartarian. It seems that as often as con 
 quering hordes swept over that part of Asia, always coming 
 from the north and east, they drove before them the inha 
 bitants of the plains,' who took refuge in some of the retired 
 
 * See G-. Pertz, Monumenta Germanica, vol. iii. 
 
CHAP. xxin. GAPS BETWEEN LANGUAGES, HOW CAUSED. 461 
 
 valleys and high mountain fastnesses, where they maintained 
 their independence, as do the Circassians in our time, in 
 spite of the power of Kussia, 
 
 In the Himalayan Mountains, from Assam to its extreme 
 north-rwestern limit, and generally in the more hilly parts of 
 British India, the diversity of languages is surprisingly great, 
 impeding the advance of civilisation and the labours of the 
 missionary. In South America and Mexico, Alexander Hum- 
 boldt reckoned the distinct tongues by hundreds, and those 
 of Africa are said to be equally numerous. Even in China, 
 some eighteen provincial dialects prevail, almost all deviat 
 ing so much from others that the speakers are not mutually 
 intelligible, and besides these there are other distinct forms 
 of speech in the mountains of the same empire. 
 
 The philologist might next proceed to point out that the 
 geographical relations of living and dead languages favour 
 the hypothesis of the living ones having been derived from 
 the extinct, in spite of our inability, in most instances, to 
 adduce documentary evidence of the fact or to discover 
 monuments of all the intermediate and transitional dialects 
 which must have existed. Thus he would observe that the 
 modern Romance languages are spoken exactly where the 
 ancient Romans once lived or ruled, and the Greek of our 
 days where the older classical Greek was formerly spoken. 
 Exceptions to this rule might be detected, but they would be 
 explicable by reference to colonisation and conquest. 
 
 As to the many and wide gaps sometimes encountered 
 between the dead and living languages, we must remember 
 that it is not part of the plan of any people to preserve 
 memorials of their forms of speech expressly for the edifica 
 tion of posterity. Their MSS. and inscriptions serve some 
 present purpose, are occasional and imperfect from the first, 
 and are rendered more fragmentary in the course of time, 
 some being intentionally destroyed, others lost by the decay 
 
462 CHANGES ALWAYS IN PROGRESS. CHAP. xxm. 
 
 of the perishable materials on which they are written; so 
 that to question the theory of all known languages being 
 derivative on the ground that we can rarely trace a passage 
 from the ancient to the modern through all the dialects 
 which must have flourished one after the other in the inter 
 mediate ages, implies a want of reflection on the laws which 
 govern the recording as well as the obliterating processes. 
 
 But another important question still remains to be con 
 sidered, namely, whether the trifling changes which can alone 
 be witnessed by a single generation, can possibly represent 
 the working of that machinery which, in the. course of many 
 centuries, has given rise to such mighty revolutions in the 
 forms of speech throughout the world. Every one may have 
 noticed in his own lifetime the stealing in of some slight 
 alterations of accent, pronunciation or spelling, or the intro 
 duction of some words borrowed from a foreign language to 
 express ideas of which no native term precisely conveyed the 
 import. He may also remember hearing for the first time 
 some cant terms or slang phrases, which have since forced 
 their way into common use, in spite of the efforts of the purist. 
 But he may still contend that, ' within the range of his 
 experience,' his language has continued unchanged, and he 
 may believe in its immutability in spite of minor variations. 
 The real question, however, at issue is, whether there are any 
 limits to this variability. He will find on further investi 
 gation, that new technical terms are coined almost daily in 
 various arts, sciences, professions, and trades, that new names 
 must be found for new inventions, that many of these acquire 
 a metaphorical sense, and then make their way into general 
 circulation, as f stereotyped,' for instance, which would have 
 been as meaningless to the men of the seventeenth century 
 as would the new terms and images derived from steamboat 
 and railway travelling to the men of the eighteenth. 
 
 If the numerous words, idioms, and phrases, many of them 
 
CHAP. xxm. NEW RIVAL TERMS AND DIALECTS. 463 
 
 of ephemeral duration, which are thus invented by the young 
 and old in various classes of society, in the nursery, the 
 school, the camp, the fleet, the courts of law and the school, 
 and the study of the man of science or literature, could all be 
 collected together and put on record, their number in one or 
 two centuries might compare with the entire permanent 
 vocabulary of the language. It becomes, therefore, a curious 
 subject of enquiry, what are the laws which govern not only 
 the invention, but also the ( selection ' of some of these words 
 or idioms, giving them currency in preference to others ? for 
 as the powers of the human memory are limited, a check must 
 be found to the endless increase and multiplication of terms, 
 and old words must be dropped nearly as fast as new ones 
 are put into circulation. Sometimes the new word or phrase, 
 or a modification of the old ones, will entirely supplant the 
 more ancient expressions, or, instead of the latter being 
 discarded, both may flourish together, the older one having 
 a more restricted use. 
 
 Although the speakers may be unconscious that any great 
 fluctuation is going on in their language, although when we 
 observe the manner in which new words and phrases are 
 thrown out, as if at random or in sport, while others get into 
 vogue, we may think the process of change to be the result 
 of mere chance, there are nevertheless fixed laws in action, 
 by which, in the general struggle for existence, some terms 
 and dialects gain the victory over others. The slightest 
 advantage attached to some new mode of pronouncing or 
 spelling, from considerations of brevity or euphony, may turn 
 the scale, or more powerful causes of selection may decide 
 which of two or more rivals shall triumph and which suc 
 cumb. Among these are fashion, or the influence of an aris 
 tocracy, whether of birth or education, popular writers, 
 orators, preachers, a centralised government organising its 
 schools expressly to promote uniformity of diction, and to 
 
464 STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE, CAUSES OF SELECTION. CHAP. xxm. 
 
 get the better of provincialisms and local dialects. Between 
 these dialects, which may be regarded as so many ' incipient 
 languages,' the competition is always keenest when they are 
 most nearly allied, and the extinction of any one of them 
 destroys some of the links by which a dominant tongue may 
 have been previously connected with some other widely distinct 
 one. It is by the perpetual loss of such intermediate forms 
 of speech that the great dissimilarity of the languages which 
 survive is brought about. Thus, if Dutch should become a 
 dead language, English and German would be separated by 
 a wider gap. 
 
 Some languages which are spoken by millions, and spread 
 over a wide area, will endure much longer than others which 
 have never had a wide range, especially if the tendency to 
 incessant change in one of these dominant tongues is arrested 
 for a time by a standard literature. But even this source of 
 stability is insecure, for popular writers themselves are great 
 innovators, sometimes coining new words, and still oftener 
 new expressions and idioms, to embody their own original 
 conceptions and sentiments, or some peculiar modes of 
 thought and feeling characteristic of their age. Even when 
 a language is regarded with superstitious veneration as the 
 vehicle of divine truths and religious precepts, and which has 
 prevailed for many generations, it will be incapable of per 
 manently maintaining its ground. Hebrew had ceased to be 
 a living language before the Christian era. Sanscrit, the 
 sacred language of the Hindoos, shared the same fate, in 
 spite of the veneration in which the Vedas are still held, and 
 in spite of many a Sanscrit poem once popular and national. 
 
 The Christians of Constantinople and the Morea still hear 
 the New Testament and their liturgy read in ancient Greek, 
 while they speak a dialect in which Paul might have preached 
 in vain at Athens. So in the Eoman Catholic Church, the 
 Italians pray in one tongue and talk another. Luther's trans- 
 
CHAP. xxin. EACH LANGUAGE FORMED SLOWLY. 465 
 
 lation of the Bible acted as a powerful cause of ' selection/ 
 giving at once to one of many competing dialects (that of 
 Saxony) a prominent and dominant position in Germany; 
 but the style of Luther has, like that of our English Bible, 
 already become somewhat antiquated. 
 
 If the doctrine of gradual transmutation be applicable to 
 languages, all those spoken in historical times must each of 
 them have had a closely allied prototype ; and accordingly, 
 whenever we can thoroughly investigate their history, we 
 find in them some internal evidence of successive additions 
 by the invention of new words or the modification of old 
 ones. Proofs also of borrowing are discernible, letters being 
 retained in the spelling of some words which have no longer 
 any meaning as they are now pronounced, no connection 
 with any corresponding sounds. Such redundant or silent 
 letters, once useful in the parent speech, have been aptly 
 compared by Mr. Darwin to rudimentary organs in living 
 beings, which, as he interprets them, have at some former 
 period been more fully developed, having had their proper 
 functions to perform in the organisation of a remote pro 
 genitor. 
 
 If all known languages are derivative and not primordial 
 creations, they must each of them have been slowly elaborated 
 in a single geographical area. No one of them can have had 
 two birthplaces. If one were carried by a colony to a distant 
 region, it would immediately begin to vary unless frequent 
 intercourse was kept up with the mother country. The 
 descendants of the same stock, if perfectly isolated, would in 
 five or six centuries, perhaps sooner, be quite unable to 
 converse with those who remained at home, or with those 
 who may have migrated to some distant region, where they 
 were shut out from all communication with others speaking 
 the same tongue. 
 
 A Norwegian colony which settled in Iceland in the ninth 
 century, maintained its independence for about 400 years. 
 
 H H 
 
466 MAY DIE OUT SUDDENLY OR GRADUALLY. CHAP. xxiu. 
 
 during which time the old Grothic which they at first spoke 
 became corrupted and considerably modified. In the mean 
 time the natives of Norway, who had enjoyed much com 
 mercial intercourse with the rest of Europe, acquired quite a 
 new speech, and looked on the Icelandic as having been 
 stationary, and as representing, the pure Grothic original of 
 which their own was an off-shoot. 
 
 A Grerman colony in Pennsylvania was cut off from 
 frequent communication with Europe for about a quarter of 
 a century, during the wars of the French Kevolution between 
 1792 and 1815. So marked had been the effect even of this 
 brief and imperfect isolation, that when Prince Bernhard of 
 Saxe Weimar travelled among them a few years after the 
 peace, he found the peasants speaking as they had done in 
 Grermany in the preceding century,* and retaining a dialect 
 which at home had already become obsolete. 
 
 Even after the renewal of the Grerman emigration from 
 Europe, when I travelled in 1841 among the same people in 
 the retired valleys of the Alleghanies, I found the newspapers 
 full of terms half English and half Grerman, and many an 
 Anglo-Saxon word which had assumed a Teutonic dress, as 
 6 fencen,' to fence, instead of umzaunen, ' flauer ' for flour, 
 instead of mehl, and so on. What with the retention of 
 terms no longer in use in the mother country, and the 
 borrowing of new ones from neighbouring states, there might 
 have arisen in Pennsylvania in five or six generations, but 
 for the influx of new comers from Grermany, a mongrel 
 speech equally unintelligible to the Anglo-Saxon and to the 
 inhabitants of the European fatherland. 
 
 If languages resemble species in having had each their 
 6 specific centre ' or single area of creation, in which they have 
 been slowly formed, so each of them is alike liable to slow or 
 
 * Travels of Prince Bernhard of Saxe Weimar, in North America, in 1825 
 and 1826, p. 123. 
 
CHAP. XXITT. ONCE LOST, CAN NEVER BE REVIVED. 467 
 
 to sudden extinction. They may die out very gradually in 
 consequence of transmutation, or abruptly by the extermi 
 nation of the last surviving representatives of the unaltered 
 type. We know in what century the last Dodo perished, 
 and we know that in the seventeenth century the language 
 of the Red Indians of Massachusetts, into which Father 
 Eliot had translated the Bible, and in which Christianity 
 was preached for several generations, ceased to exist, the last 
 individuals by whom it was spoken having at that period 
 died without issue.* But if just before that event the white 
 man had retreated from the continent, or had been swept off 
 by an epidemic, those Indians might soon have repeopled 
 the wilderness, and their copious vocabulary and peculiar 
 forms of expression might have lasted without important 
 modification to this day. The extinction, however, of lan 
 guages in general is not abrupt, any more than that of 
 species. It will also be evident from what has been said, 
 that a language which has once died out can never be 
 revived, since the same assemblage of conditions can never 
 be restored even among the descendants of the same stock, 
 much less simultaneously among all the surrounding nations 
 with whom they may be in contact. 
 
 We may compare the persistency of languages, or the 
 tendency of each generation to adopt without change the 
 vocabulary of its predecessor, to the force of inheritance in 
 the organic world, which causes the offspring to resemble its 
 parents. The inventive power which coins new words or 
 modifies old ones, and adapts them to new wants and con 
 ditions as often as these arise, answers to the variety-making 
 power in the animate creation. 
 
 Progressive improvement in language is a necessary con 
 sequence of the progress of the human mind from one gene 
 ration to another. As civilisation advances, a greater number 
 * Lyell, Travels in North America, vol. i, p. 260. 1845. 
 
 H H 2 
 
468 THOUGH LANGUAGES AND SPECIES DERIVATIVE, CHAP. xxm. 
 
 of terms are required to express abstract ideas, and words 
 previously used in a vague sense, so long as the state of 
 society was rude and barbarous, gradually acquire more 
 precise and definite meanings, in consequence of which 
 several terms must be employed to express ideas and things, 
 which a single word had before signified, though somewhat 
 loosely and imperfectly. 
 
 The farther this subdivision of function is carried, the 
 more complete and perfect the language becomes, just as 
 species of higher grade have special organs, such as eyes, 
 lungs, and stomach, for seeing, breathing, and digesting, which 
 in simpler organisms are all performed by one and the same 
 part of the body.* 
 
 When we have satisfied ourselves that all the existing lan 
 guages, instead of being primordial creations, or the direct 
 gifts of a supernatural Power, have been slowly elaborated, 
 partly by the modification of pre-existing dialects, partly by 
 borrowing terms at successive periods from numerous foreign 
 sources, and partly by new inventions made some of them 
 deliberately, and some casually and as it were fortuitously, 
 when we have discovered the principal causes of selection, 
 which have guided the adoption or rejection of rival names 
 for the same things and ideas, rival modes of pronouncing 
 the same words and provincial dialects competing one with 
 another, we are still very far from comprehending all the 
 laws which have governed the formation of each language. 
 
 It was a profound saying of William Humboldt, that 
 4 Man is man only by means of speech, but in order to invent 
 speech he must be already man.' Other animals may be 
 able to utter sounds more articulate and as varied as the 
 click of the Bushman , but voice alone can never enable 
 brute intelligence to acquire language. 
 ' When we consider the complexity of every form of speech 
 
 * See Herbert Spencer's Psychology and Scientific Essays. 
 
 
CHAP. XXTII. THEIR ORIGIN A MYSTERY. 469 
 
 spoken by a highly civilised nation, and discover that the gram*- 
 matical rules and the inflections which denote number, time, 
 and quality are usually the product of a rude state of society 
 that the savage and the sage, the peasant and man of letters, 
 the child and the philosopher, have worked together, in the 
 course of many generations, to build up a fabric which has 
 been truly described as a wonderful instrument of thought, a 
 machine, the several parts of which are so well adjusted to 
 each other as to resemble the product of one period and of 
 a single mind, we cannot but look upon the result as a 
 profound mystery, and one of which the separate builders 
 have been almost as unconscious as are the bees in a hive of 
 the architectural skill and mathematical knowledge which is 
 displayed in the construction of the honeycomb. 
 
 In our attempts to account for the origin of species, we 
 find ourselves still sooner brought face to face with the 
 working of a law of developement of so high an order as to 
 stand nearly in the same relation as the Deity himself to 
 man's finite understanding, a law capable of adding new and 
 powerful causes, such as the moral and intellectual faculties 
 of the human race, to a system of nature which had gone on 
 for millions of years without the intervention of any analogous 
 cause. If we confound ( Variation ' or ' Natural Selection ' 
 with such creation al laws, we deify secondary causes or 
 immeasurably exaggerate their influence. 
 
 Yet we ought by no means to undervalue the importance 
 of the step which will have been made, should it ever become 
 highly probable that the past changes of the organic world 
 have been brought about by the subordinate agency of such 
 causes as ' Variation' and ' Natural Selection.' All our 
 advances in the knowledge of Nature have consisted of such 
 steps as these, and we must not be discouraged because 
 greater mysteries remain behind wholly inscrutable to us. 
 
 If the philologist is asked whether in the beginning of things 
 
470 SPECULATIONS ON PRIMORDIAL TYPES. CHAP. xxm. 
 
 there was one or five, or a greater number of languages, he 
 may answer that, before he can reply to such a question, it 
 must be decided whether the origin of man was single, or 
 whether there were many primordial races. But he may 
 also observe, that if mankind began their career in a rude 
 state of society, their whole vocabulary would be limited to 
 a few words, and that if they then separated into several 
 isolated communities, each of these would soon acquire an 
 entirely distinct language, some roots being lost and others 
 corrupted and transformed beyond the possibility of subse 
 quent identification, so that it might be hopeless to expect to 
 trace back the living and dead languages to one starting 
 point, even if that point were of much more modern date 
 than we have now good reason to suppose. In like manner 
 it may be said of species, that if those first formed were of 
 very simple structure, and they began to vary and to lose 
 some organs by disuse and acquire new ones by develope- 
 ment, they might soon differ as much as so many distinctly 
 created primordial types. It would therefore be a waste of 
 time to speculate on the number of original monads or germs 
 from which all plants and animals were subsequently evolved, 
 more especially as the oldest fossiliferous strata known to us 
 may be the last of a long series of antecedent formations, which 
 once contained organic remains. It was not till geologists 
 ceased to discuss the condition of the original nucleus of the 
 planet, whether it was solid or fluid, and whether it owed its 
 fluidity to aqueous or igneous causes, that they began to 
 achieve their great triumphs ; and the question now at issue, 
 whether the living species are connected with the extinct by a 
 common bond of descent, will best be cleared up by devoting 
 ourselves to the study of the actual state of the living world, 
 and to those monuments of the past in which the relics of 
 the animate creation of former ages are best preserved and 
 least mutilated by the hand of time. 
 
CHAP. xxiv. f TRANSMUTATION AS AN HYPOTHESIS. 471 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 BEARING OF THE DOCTRINE OF TRANSMUTATION ON THE ORIGIN 
 OF MAN, AND HIS PLACE IN THE CREATION. 
 
 WHETHER MAN CAN BE REGARDED AS AN EXCEPTION TO THE RULE 
 IF THE DOCTRINE OF TRANSMUTATION BE EMBRACED FOR THE REST 
 
 OF THE ANIMAL KINGDOM ZOOLOGICAL RELATIONS OF MAN TO OTHER 
 
 MAMMALIA SYSTEMS OF CLASSIFICATION TERM QUADRUMANOUS, 
 
 WHY DECEPTIVE WHETHER THE STRUCTURE OF THE HUMAN BRAIN 
 ENTITLES MAN TO FORM A DISTINCT SUB-CLASS OF THE MAMMALIA 
 INTELLIGENCE OF THE LOWER ANIMALS COMPARED TO THE IN 
 TELLECT AND REASON OF MAN GROUNDS ON WHICH MAN HAS 
 
 BEEN REFERRED TO A DISTINCT KINGDOM OF NATURE IMMATERIAL 
 
 PRINCIPLE COMMON TO MAN AND ANIMALS NON-DISCOVERY OF IN 
 TERMEDIATE LINKS AMONG FOSSIL ANTHROPOMORPHOUS SPECD3S 
 
 HALLAM ON THE COMPOUND NATURE OF MAN, AND HIS PLACE IN 
 
 THE CREATION GREAT INEQUALITY OF MENTAL ENDOWMENT IN 
 
 DIFFERENT HUMAN RACES AND INDIVIDUALS DEVELOPED BY VARIATION 
 AND ORDINARY GENERATION HOW FAR A CORRESPONDING DIVERGENCE 
 IN PHYSICAL STRUCTURE MAY RESULT FROM THE WORKING OF THE 
 SAME CAUSES CONCLUDING REMARKS. 
 
 SOME of the opponents of transmutation, who are well 
 versed in Natural History, admit that though that doc 
 trine is untenable, it is not without its practical advantages 
 as a ' useful working hypothesis,' often suggesting good ex 
 periments and observations, and aiding us to retain in the 
 memory a multitude of facts respecting the geographical 
 distribution of genera, and species, both of animals and 
 plants, and the succession in time of organic remains, and 
 many other phenomena which, but for such a theory, would 
 be wholly without a common bond of relationship. 
 
 It is in fact conceded by many eminent zoologists and 
 
472 THEOKY OF PROGRESSION. CHAP. XXTV. 
 
 botanists, as before explained, that whatever may be the 
 nature of the species-making power or law, its effects are of 
 such a character as to imitate the results which variation, 
 guided by natural selection, would produce, if only we could 
 assume with certainty that there are no limits to the varia 
 bility of species. But as the anti-transmutationists are per 
 suaded that such limits do exist, they regard the hypothesis 
 as simply a provisional one, and expect that it will one day 
 be surperseded by another cognate theory, which will not 
 require us to assume the former continuousness of the 
 links which have connected the past and present states 
 of the organic world, or the outgoing with the incoming 
 species. 
 
 In like manner, many of those who hesitate to give in 
 their full adhesion to the doctrine of progression, the other 
 twin branch of the developement theory, and who even object 
 to it, as frequently tending to retard the reception of new 
 facts supposed to militate against opinions solely founded on 
 negative evidence, are, nevertheless, agreed that on the whole 
 it is of great service in guiding our speculations. Indeed, it 
 cannot be denied that a theory which establishes a con 
 nection between the absence of all relics of vertebrata in the 
 oldest fossiliferous rocks, and the presence of man's remains in 
 the newest, which affords a more than plausible explanation of 
 the successive appearance in strata of intermediate age of the 
 fish, reptile, bird, and rnammifer, has no ordinary claims to 
 our favour as comprehending the largest number of positive 
 and negative facts gathered from all parts o*f the globe, and 
 extending over countless ages, that science has perhaps ever 
 attempted to embrace in one grand generalisation. 
 
 But will not transmutation, if adopted, require us to 
 include the human race in the same continuous series of 
 developements, so that we must hold that man himself has 
 been derived by an unbroken line of descent from some one 
 
CHAP. xxiv. SYSTEMS OF CLASSIFICATION. 473 
 
 of the inferior animals? We certainly cannot escape from 
 such a conclusion without abandoning many of the weightiest 
 arguments which have been urged in support of variation 
 and natural selection, considered as the subordinate causes 
 by which new types have been gradually introduced into the 
 earth. Many of the gaps which separate the most nearly 
 allied genera and orders of mammalia are, in a physical 
 point of view, as wide as those which divide man from the 
 mammalia most nearly akin to him, and the extent of his 
 isolation, whether we regard his whole nature or simply his 
 corporeal attributes, must be considered before we can discuss 
 the bearing of transmutation upon his origin and place in 
 the creation. 
 
 Systems of Classification. 
 
 In order to qualify ourselves to judge of the degree of 
 affinity in physical organisation between Man and the lower 
 animals, we cannot do better than study those systems of 
 classification which have been proposed by the most eminent 
 teachers of natural history. Of these an elaborate and 
 faithful summary has recently been drawn up by the late 
 Isidore Geoffrey St. Hilaire, which the reader will do well 
 to consult.* 
 
 He begins by passing in review numerous schemes of 
 classification, each of them having some merit, and most 
 of which have been invented with a view of assigning to 
 Man a separate place in the system of Nature, as, for 
 example, by dividing animals into rational and irrational, or 
 the whole organic world into three kingdoms, the human, the 
 animal, and the vegetable, an arrangement defended on the 
 ground that Man is raised as much by his intelligence above 
 the animals as are these by their sensibility above plants. 
 
 * Histoire Naturale Generale des Kgnes organiques. Paris, vol. ii. 1856. 
 
474 LINNJ3AN CLASSIFICATION OF MAN. CHAP. xxiv. 
 
 Admitting that these schemes are not unphilosophical, as 
 duly recognising the double nature of Man (his moral and 
 intellectual, as well as his physical attributes), Isidore Gr. 
 St. Hilaire observes that little knowledge has been im 
 parted by them. We have gained, he says, much more from 
 those masters of the science who have not attempted any 
 compromise between two distinct orders of ideas, the physical 
 and psychological, and who have confined their attention 
 strictly to Man's physical relation to the lower animals. 
 
 Linnaeus led the way in this field of enquiry by comparing 
 Man and the apes, in the same manner as he compared these 
 last with the carnivores, ruminants, rodents, or any other 
 division of warm-blooded quadrupeds. After several modifi 
 cations of his original scheme, he ended by placing Man as 
 one of the many genera in his order Primates, which 
 embraced not only the apes and lemurs, but the bats also, 
 as he found these last to be nearly allied to some of the 
 lowest forms of the monkeys. But all modern naturalists, who 
 retain the order Primates, agree to exclude from it the bats 
 or cheiroptera ; and most of them class Man as one of several 
 families of the order Primates. In this, as in most systems 
 of classification, the families of modern zoologists and botanists 
 correspond with the genera of Linnseus. 
 
 Blumenbach, in 1779, proposed to deviate from this course, 
 and to separate Man from the apes as an order apart, under 
 the name of Bimana, or two-handed. In making this innova 
 tion he seems at first to have felt that it could not be 
 justified without calling in psychological considerations to his 
 aid, to strengthen those which were purely anatomical ; for, 
 in the earliest edition of his s Manual of Natural History/ 
 he defined Man to be ' animal rationale, loquens, erectum, 
 bimanum,' whereas in later editions he restricted himself 
 entirely to the two last characters, namely, the erect position 
 and the two hands, or 4 animal erectum, bimamun.' 
 
CHAP. xxiv. OEDER BIMANA OF BLUMENBACH. 475 
 
 The terms 'bimanous' and 'quadrumanous' had been al 
 ready employed by BufTon, in 1766, but not applied in a strict 
 zoological classification till so used by Blumenbach. Twelve 
 years later, Cuvier adopted the same order Bimana for the 
 human family, while the apes, monkeys, and lemurs consti 
 tuted a separate order, called Quadrumana. 
 
 Eespecting this last innovation, Isidore GK St. Hilaire asks, 
 ' How could such a division stand, repudiated as it was by 
 the anthropologists in the name of the moral and intellectual 
 supremacy of Man ; and by the zoologists, on the ground of 
 its incompatibility with natural affinities and with the true 
 principles of classification ? Separated as a group of ordinal 
 value, placed at the same distance from the ape as the latter 
 from the carnivore, Man is at once too near and too distant 
 from the higher mammalia ; too near if we take into ac 
 count those elevated faculties, which, raising Man above all 
 other organised beings, accord to him not only the first, but 
 a separate place in the creation, too far if we merely con 
 sider the organic affinities which unite him with the quadru- 
 mana ; with the apes especially, which, in a purely physical 
 point of view, approach Man more nearly than they do the 
 lemurs. 
 
 f What, then, is this order of Bimana of Blumenbach and 
 Cuvier ? An impracticable compromise between two oppo 
 site and irreconcilable systems between two orders of ideas 
 which are clearly expressed in the language of natural history 
 by these two words : the human kingdom and the human 
 family. It is one of those would-be via media propositions 
 which, once seen through, satisfy no one, precisely because 
 they are intended to please everybody ; half-truths, perhaps, 
 but also half-falsehoods ; for what, in science, is a half-truth 
 but an error ? ' 
 
 Isidore Gr. St. Hilaire then proceeds to show how, in spite 
 of the great authority of Blumenbach and Cuvier, a large 
 
476 TERM c QUADRUMANOUS,' CHAP. XXTV. 
 
 proportion of modern zoologists of note have rejected the 
 order Bimana, and have regarded Man simply as a family 
 of one and the same order, Primates. 
 
 Term ' QuadrumanousJ why deceptive. 
 
 Even the term c Quadrumanous ' has lately been shown by 
 Professor Huxley, in a lecture delivered by him in the spring 
 of 1860-61, which I had the good fortune to hear, to have 
 proved a fertile source of popular delusion, conveying ideas 
 which the great anatomists Blumenbach and Cuvier never 
 entertained themselves, namely, that in the so-called 
 Quadrumana the extremities of the hind-limbs bear a real 
 resemblance to the human hands, instead of corresponding 
 anatomically with the human feet. 
 
 As this subject bears very directly on the question, how 
 far Man is entitled, in a purely zoological classification, to 
 rank as an order apart, I shall proceed to cite, in an abridged 
 form, the words of the lecturer above alluded to. * 
 
 6 To gain,' he observes, ' a precise conception of the resem 
 blances and differences of the hand and foot, and of the 
 distinctive characters of each, we must look below the skin, 
 and compare the bony framework and its motor apparatus in 
 each. 
 
 ( The foot of Man is distinguished from his hand by 
 
 6 1. The arrangement of the tarsal bones. 
 
 6 2. By having a short flexor and a short extensor muscle 
 of the digits. 
 
 ( 3. By possessing the muscle termed peronceus longus. 
 And if we desire to ascertain whether the terminal division 
 
 * Professor Huxley's third lecture been embodied with the rest of the 
 1 On the Motor Organs of Man com- course in his forthcoming work, en- 
 pared with those of other Animals,' de- titled, ' Evidence as to Man's Place in 
 livered in the Eoyal School of Mines, Nature.' Williams & Norgate, London. 
 in Jermyn Street (March 1861), has 
 
CHAP. xxiv. WHY DECEPTIVE. 477 
 
 of a limb in other animals is to be called a foot or a hand, it 
 is by the presence or absence of these characters that we 
 must be guided, and not by the mere proportions, and greater 
 or lesser mobility of the great toe, which may vary indefi 
 nitely without any fundamental alteration in the structure of 
 the foot. Keeping these considerations in mind, let us now 
 turn to the limbs of the Gorilla. The terminal division of 
 the fore-limb presents no difficulty bone for bone, and 
 muscle for muscle, are found to be arranged precisely as in 
 Man, or with such minute differences as are found as varieties 
 in Man. The Gorilla's hand is clumsier, heavier, and has a 
 thumb somewhat shorter in proportion than that of Man; 
 but no one has ever doubted its being a true hand. 
 
 ( At first sight, the termination of the hind-limb of the 
 Gorilla looks very hand-like, and as it is still more so in the 
 lower apes, it is not wonderful that the appellation " Quadru- 
 mana," or four-handed creatures, adopted from the older 
 anatomists by Blumenbach, and unfortunately rendered 
 current by Cuvier, should have gained such wide acceptance 
 as a name for the ape order. But the most cursory anatomi 
 cal investigation at once proves, that the resemblance of the 
 so-called " hind-hand " to a true hand is only skin deep, 
 and that, in all essential respects, the hind-limb of the Gorilla 
 is as truly terminated by a foot as that of Man. The tarsal 
 bones, in all important circumstances of number, disposition, 
 and form, resemble those of Man. The metatarsals and 
 digits, on the other hand, are proportionally longer and 
 more slender, while the great toe is not only proportionally 
 shorter and weaker, but its metatarsal bone is united by a 
 far more movable joint with the tarsus. At the game 
 time, the foot is set more obliquely upon the leg than in 
 Man. 
 
 ( As to the muscles, there is a short flexor, a short extensor, 
 and a peronseus longus, while the tendons of the long flexors 
 
478 DIFFERENCES OF HAND AND FOOT CHAP. xxiv. 
 
 of the great toe and of the other toes are united together 
 and into an accessory fleshy bundle. 
 
 6 The hind-limb of the Gorilla, therefore, ends in a true 
 foot with a very movable great toe. It is a prehensile foot, if 
 you will, but is in no sense a hand : it is a foot which differs 
 from that of Man in no fundamental character, but in mere 
 proportions degree of mobility and secondary arrange 
 ment of its parts. 
 
 'It must not be supposed, however, that because I speak 
 of these differences as not fundamental, that 1 wish to under 
 rate their value. They are important enough in their way, 
 the structure of the foot being in strict correlation with that 
 of the rest of the organism ; but after all, regarded anatomi 
 cally, the resemblances between the foot of Man and the foot 
 of the Grorilla are far more striking and important than the 
 differences.' * 
 
 After dwelling on some points of anatomical detail, highly 
 important, but for which I have not space here, the Professor 
 continues : Throughout all these modifications, it must be 
 recollected that the foot loses no one of its essential cha 
 racters. Every monkey and lemur exhibits the characteristic 
 arrangement of tarsal bones, possesses a short flexor and 
 short extensor muscle, and a peronseus longus. Varied as 
 the proportions and appearance of the organ may be, the 
 terminal division of the hind-limb remains in plan and prin 
 ciple of construction a foot, and never in the least degree 
 approaches a hand.'f For these reasons, Professor Huxley 
 rejects the term * Quadrumana,' as leading to serious mis 
 conception, and regards Man as one of the families of the 
 Primates. This method of classification he shows to be 
 equally borne out by an appeal to another character on which 
 so much reliance has always been placed in classification, 
 
 * Professor Huxley, ibid. f Ibid. 
 
CHAP. XXTV. COMMON TO MAN AND THE APES. 479 
 
 as affording in the mammalia the most trustworthy indica 
 tions of affinity, namely, the dentition. 
 
 ' The number of teeth in the Gorilla and all the Old World 
 monkeys except the lemurs is thirty-two, the same as in 
 Man, and the general pattern of their crowns the same. 
 But besides other distinctions, the canines in all but Man 
 project in the upper or lower jaws almost like tusks. But all 
 the American apes have four more teeth in their permanent 
 set, or thirty-eight in all, so that they differ in this respect 
 more from the Old World apes than do these last from Man. 
 
 If therefore, by reference to this character, we place Man 
 in a separate order, we must make several orders for the 
 apes, monkeys, and lemurs, and so, in regard to the structure 
 of the hands and feet before alluded to, ( the Gorilla differs 
 far more from some of the quadrumana than he differs from 
 Man.' Indeed, Professor Huxley contends that there is more 
 difference between the hand and foot of the Gorilla and those 
 of the Orang, one of the anthropomorphous apes, than 
 between those of the Gorilla and Man, for 'the thumb 
 of the Orang differs by its shortness and by the absence of 
 any special long flexor muscle from that of the Gorilla more 
 than it differs from that of Man.' The carpus also of the 
 Orang, like that of most lower apes, contains nine bones, 
 while in the Gorilla, as in Man and the Chimpanzee, there are 
 only eight.' Other characters are also given to show that 
 the Orang's foot separates it more widely from the Gorilla 
 than that of the Gorilla separates that ape from Man. In 
 some of the lower apes, the divergence from the human type 
 of hand and foot, as well as from those of the Gorilla, is still 
 greater, as, for example, in the spider-monkey and marmoset.* 
 
 If the muscles, viscera, or any other part of the animal 
 fabric, including the brain, be compared, the results are 
 declared to be similar. 
 
 * Huxley, ibid. p. 29. 
 
 
480 STRUCTURE OF THE HUMAN BRAIN. CHAP. xxiv. 
 
 Whether the Structure of the Human Brain entitles Man 
 to Form a distinct Sub-class of the Mammalia. 
 
 When, in consequence of these and many other zoological 
 considerations, the order Bimana had already been declared 
 in 1856, by Isidore Gr. St. Hilaire, in his history of the science 
 above quoted (p. 473), 'to have become obsolete,' even 
 though sanctioned by the great names of Blumenbach and 
 Cuvier, the reader may imagine the surprise excited in the 
 scientific world when Professor Owen announced, in the year 
 following the publication of Gr. St. Hilaire's work, that he 
 had been led by purely anatomical considerations to sepa 
 rate Man from the other Primates and from the mammalia 
 generally as a distinct sub-class, thus departing farther from 
 the classification of Blumenbach and Cuvier than they had 
 ventured to do from that of Linnaeus. 
 
 The proposed innovation was based chiefly on three cerebral 
 characters belonging, it was alleged, exclusively to Man, and 
 thus described in the following passages of a memoir com 
 municated to the Linnasan Society in 1857, in which all the 
 mammalia were divided, according to the structure of the 
 brain, into four sub-classes, represented by the kangaroo, the 
 beaver, the ape, and Man, respectively : 
 
 * In Man, the brain presents an ascensive step in develope- 
 ment, higher and more strongly marked than that by which 
 the preceding sub-class was distinguished from the one below 
 it. Not only do the cerebral hemispheres overlap the olfac 
 tory lobes and cerebellum, but they extend in advance of the 
 one and farther back than the other. Their posterior de- 
 velopement is so marked, that anatomists have assigned to 
 that part the character of a third lobe ; it is peculiar to the 
 genus Homo, and equally peculiar is the " posterior horn of 
 the lateral ventricle " and the " hippocampus minor " which 
 characterises the hind-lobe of each hemisphere. The super- 
 

 CHAP. xxiv. SUB-CLASS OF THE MAMMALIA. 481 
 
 ficial grey matter of the cerebrum, through the number and 
 depth of its convolutions, attains its maximum of extent 
 in Man. 
 
 6 Peculiar mental powers are associated with this highest 
 form of brain, and their consequences wonderfully illustrate 
 the value of the cerebral character ; according to my estimate 
 of which, I am led to regard the genus Homo as not merely a 
 representative of a distinct order, but of a distinct sub-class 
 of the mammalia, for which I propose the name of "Archen- 
 cephala" '* 
 
 The above definition is accompanied in the same memoir 
 by the following note : 'Not being able to appreciate, or 
 conceive, of the distinction between the psychical phenomena 
 of a chimpanzee and of a Boschisman, or of an Aztec with 
 arrested brain-growth, as being of a nature so essential as to 
 preclude a comparison between them, or as being other than 
 a difference of degree, I cannot shut my eyes to the signifi 
 cance of that all-pervading similitude of structure every 
 tooth, every bone, strictly homologous which makes the 
 determination of the difference between Homo and Pithecus 
 the anatomist's difficulty ; and therefore, with every respect 
 for the author of the "Kecords of Creation,"f I follow Linnaeus 
 and Cuvier in regarding mankind as a legitimate subject of 
 zoological comparison and classification.' 
 
 To illustrate the difference between the human and Simian 
 brain, Professor Owen gave figures of the negro's brain as 
 represented by Tiedemann, an original one of a South 
 American monkey, Midas rufimanus, and one of the chim 
 panzee, fig. 54, p. 482, from a memoir published in 1849 by 
 MM. Schroeder van der Kolk and M. Vrolik.J 
 
 * Owen, Proceedings of the Linnaean J Comptes rendus de 1' Academic 
 
 Society, London, vol. viii. p. 20. Koyale des Sciences, vol. xiii. Am- 
 
 f The late Archbishop of Canter- sterdam. 
 bury, Dr. Sumner. 
 
 I I 
 
482 
 
 STRUCTURE OF BRAIN 
 
 CHAP. XXIV. 
 
 Fig. 54 
 
 Upper surface of brain of China 
 panzee, distorted (from Schroeder 
 van der Kolk and Vrolik). 
 
 A. Left cerebral hemisphere. 
 
 B. Eight ditto. 
 
 c. Cerebellum displaced. 
 
 Fig. 55 
 
 Side view of same (from 
 Schroeder van der Kolk and 
 Vrolik), showing at e the ex 
 tension of the displaced cere 
 bellum beyond the cerebrum 
 at d. 
 
 Fig. 56 
 
 Correct side view of Chimpan 
 zee's brain (from Gratiolet), 
 showing the backward extension 
 of the cerebrum at d, beyond the 
 cerebellum at e. 
 
 ff. Fissure of Sylvius. 
 
CHAP. XXIV. 
 
 OF MAN AND APES COMPAKED. 
 
 483 
 
 Fig. 57. 
 
 Correct view of upper surface of Chimpanzee's brain (from G-ratiolet), 
 in which the cerebrum covers and conceals the cerebellum. 
 
 Fig. 58 
 
 Side view of human brain (from Gratiolet), namely, that of the bush- 
 woman called the Hottentot Venus. 
 
 A. Left cerebral hemisphere. c. Cerebellum. 
 
 //. Fissure of Sylvius. 
 
 Scale of the five figures, from 54 to 58, half the diameter of the natural size. 
 
 112 
 
484 STRUCTURE OF BRAIN CHAP. xxiv. 
 
 The selection of the last-mentioned figure was most unfor 
 tunate, for three years before, M. Gratiolet, the highest 
 authority in cerebral anatomy of our age, had, in his splendid 
 work on ( The Convolutions of the Brain in Man and the 
 Primates' (Paris, 1854), pointed out that, though this 
 engraving faithfully expressed the cerebral foldings as seen 
 on the surface, it gave a very false idea of the relative 
 position of the several parts of the brain, which, as very 
 commonly happens in. such preparations, had shrunk and 
 greatly sunk down by their own weight.* 
 
 Anticipating the serious mistakes which would arise from 
 this inaccurate representation of the brain of the ape, pub 
 lished under the auspices of men so deserving of trust as the 
 two above-named Dutch anatomists, M. Gratiolet thought it 
 expedient, by way of warning to his readers, to repeat their in 
 correct figures (figs. 54 and 55, p. 482), and to place by the side 
 of them two correct views (57, p. 483, and 56, p. 482) of the 
 brain of the same ape. By reference to these illustrations, 
 as well as to fig. 58, p. 483, the reader will see not only the 
 contrast of the relative position of the cerebrum and cere 
 bellum, as delineated in the natural as well as in the distorted 
 state, but also the remarkable general correspondence be 
 tween the chimpanzee brain and that of the human subject 
 in everything save in size. The human brain (fig. 58) here 
 given, by Gratiolet, is that of an African bushwoman, 
 called the Hottentot Venus, who was exhibited formerly 
 in London, and who died in Paris. 
 
 Kespecting this striking analogy of cerebral structure in 
 Man and the apes, Gratiolet says, in the work above cited : 
 6 The convoluted brain of Man and the smooth brain of the 
 
 * Gratiolet' s words are : ' Les plis profondement affaisse, aussi la forme 
 
 cerebraux du chimpanze y sont fort generale du cerveau est-elle rendue, 
 
 bien etudies, malheureusement le cer- dans lenrs planches, d'une maniere 
 
 veau qui leur a servi de modele etait tout-a-fait fausse.' Ibid. p. 18. 
 
CHAP. xxiv. OF MAN AND APES COMPARED. 485 
 
 marmoset resemble each other by the quadruple character of 
 a rudimentary olfactory lobe, a posterior lobe completely 
 covering the cerebellum, a well-defined fissure of Sylvius, 
 (//,fig. 56,) and lastly, a posterior horn in the lateral ventricle. 
 These characters are not met with together, except in Man 
 and the apes.'* 
 
 In reference to the other figure of a monkey given by 
 Professor Owen, namely, that of the Midas, one of the 
 Marmosets, he states, in 1857 as he had done in 1837, 
 that the posterior part of the cerebral hemispheres ( extends, 
 as in most of the quadrumana, over the greater part of the 
 cerebellum.'^ In 1859, in his Eeade Lecture, delivered to 
 the University of Cambridge, the only illustration which he 
 gave of an ape's brain was a reproduction of that distorted 
 one of the Dutch anatomists already cited (fig. 54, p. 482). 
 
 Two years later, Professor Huxley, in a memoir ' On the 
 Zoological Kelations of Man with the Lower Animals,' took 
 occasion to refer to Gratiolet's warning, and to cite his 
 criticism on the Dutch plates ; J but this reminder appears 
 to have been overlooked by Professor Owen, who six months 
 later came out with a new paper on ( The Cerebral Character 
 of Man and the Ape,' in. which he repeated the incorrect re 
 presentation of Schroeder van der Kolk and Vrolik, associating 
 it with Tiedemann's figure of a negro's brain, expressly to 
 show the relative and different extent to which the cerebellum 
 is overlapped by the cerebrum in the two cases respectively. 
 In the ape's brain as thus depicted, the portion of the cere 
 bellum left uncovered is greater than in the lemurs, the lowest 
 type of Primates, and almost as large as in the rodentia, or 
 some of the lowest grades of the mammalia. 
 
 * Gratiolet, ibid. Avant-propos, J Huxley, Natural History Keview, 
 
 p. 2, 1854. January 7, 1861, p. 76. 
 
 f Proceedings of the Linnsean So- Annals and Magazine of Natural 
 
 ciety, 1857, p. 18, and Philosophical History, vol. vii. p. 456, and PI. XX., 
 
 Transactions, 1837, p. 93. June 1861. 
 
486 STRUCTURE OF BRAIN. CHAP. xxiv. 
 
 When the Dutch naturalists above mentioned found their 
 figures so often appealed to as authority, by one the weight of 
 whose opinion on such matters they well knew how to ap 
 preciate, they resolved to do their best towards preventing the 
 public from being misled. Accordingly, they addressed to 
 the Eoyal Academy of Amsterdam a memoir s On the brain 
 of an Orang-outang ' which had just died in the Zoological 
 Gardens of that city.* The dissection of this ape, in 1861, 
 fully bore out the general conclusions at which they had 
 previously arrived in 1849, as to the existence both in the 
 human and the simian brain of the three characters, which 
 Professor Owen had represented as exclusively appertaining 
 to Man, namely, the occipital or posterior lobe, the hippo 
 campus minor, and the posterior cornu. These last two 
 features consist of certain cavities and furrows in the posterior 
 lobes, which are caused by the foldings of the brain, and are 
 only visible when it is dissected. MM. Schroeder van der 
 Kolk and Vrolik took this opportunity of candidly confessing, 
 that M. Grratiolet's comments on the defects of their two 
 figures (figs. 54 and 55) were perfectly just, and they ex 
 pressed regret that Professor Owen should have overstated 
 the differences existing between the brain of Man and the 
 Quadrumana, 'led astray, as they supposed, by his zeal to 
 combat the Darwinian theory respecting the transformation 
 of species,' a doctrine against which they themselves pro 
 tested strongly, saying that it belongs to a class of specula 
 tions which are sure to be revived from time to time, and 
 are always 'peculiarly seductive to young and sanguine 
 minds.' f 
 
 As the two memoirs before alluded to by us (p. 408), the 
 one by Mr. Darwin on ( Natural Selection,' and the other by 
 Mr. Wallace ' On the Tendency of Varieties to depart inde- 
 
 * This paper is reprinted in the tory Eeview for January 1862, vol. ii. 
 original French, in the Natural His- p. 111. f Ibid. p. 114. 
 
CHAP. xxiv. OF MAN AND APES COMPARED. 487 
 
 finitely from the original Type,' did not appear till 1858, a 
 year after Professor Owen's classification of the mammalia, 
 and as Darwin's ' Origin of Species ' was not published till 
 another year had elapsed, we cannot accept the explanation 
 above offered to us of the causes which led the founder of 
 the sub-class Archencephala to seek for new points of dis 
 tinction between the human and simian brains; but the 
 Dutch anatomists may have fallen into this anachronism by 
 having just read, in the paper by Professor Owen in the 
 Annals, some prefatory allusions to f the Vestiges of Creation, 
 'Natural Selection, and the question whether man be or be 
 not a descendant of the ape.' 
 
 The number of original and important memoirs to which 
 this discussion on the cerebral relations of Man to the Pri 
 mates has already given rise in less than five years, must 
 render the controversy for ever memorable in the history of 
 Comparative Anatomy.* 
 
 In England alone, no less than fifteen genera of the Pri 
 mates (the subjects having been almost all furnished by that 
 admirable institution, the Zoological Gardens of London) 
 have been anatomically examined, and they include nearly 
 all the leading types of structure of the Old and New 
 World apes and monkeys, from the most anthropoid form to 
 that farthest removed from Man ; in other words, from the 
 Chimpanzee to the Lemur. These are 
 
 Troglodytes (Chimpanzee). 
 Pithecus (Orang). 
 Hylobates (Gibbon). 
 
 Semnopithecus. 
 Cercopithecus. 
 Macacus. 
 Cynocephalus (Baboon). 
 
 * Eolleston, Natural History Ee- Transactions, 1862.) Id. on Javan 
 
 view, April 1861. Huxley, on Brain Loris (Proceedings of the Zoological 
 
 of Ateles, Zoological Proceedings, Society, 1862). Id. on Anatomy of 
 
 June 1861. Flower, Posterior Lobe Pithecia (ibid. December 1862). 
 in Quadrumana, &c. (Philosophical 
 
488 STEUCTUEE OF BBAIN CHAP. xxiv. 
 
 Aides (Spider Monkey). 
 Cebus (Capuchin Monkey). 
 Pitheda (Saki). 
 Nyctipithecus (Douricouli). 
 
 Hapale (Marmoset). 
 Otolicnus. 
 
 Lemur. 
 
 In July, 1861, Mr. Marshall, in a paper on the brain of a 
 young Chimpanzee, which he had dissected immediately after 
 its death, gave a series of photographic drawings, showing 
 that when the parts are all in a fresh state, the posterior lobe 
 of the cerebrum, instead of simply covering the cerebellum, is 
 prolonged backwards beyond it even to a greater extent than 
 in Gratiolet's figure, 56, p. 482, and, what is more in point, 
 in a greater degree relatively speaking (at least in the young 
 state of the animal) than in Man. In fact, ' the projection is 
 to the extent of about one-ninth of the total length of the 
 cerebrum, whereas the average excess of overlapping is only 
 one-eleventh in the human brain.' * 
 
 The same author gives an instructive account of the man 
 ner in which displacement and distortion take place when 
 such brains are preserved in spirits as in the ordinary pre 
 parations of the anatomist. 
 
 Mr. Flower, in a recent paper on the posterior lobe of the 
 cerebrum in the Quadrumana,f remarks, that although 
 Tiedemann had declared himself unable in 1821 to detect 
 the hippocampus minor or the posterior cornu of the lateral 
 ventricle in the brain of a Macacus dissected by him, Cuvier, 
 nevertheless, mentions the latter as characteristic of Man 
 and the apes, and M. Serres, in his well-known work on 
 the brain in 1826, has shown in at least four species of apes 
 
 * Natural History Eeview, July of backward extension of the cerebrum 
 
 1861, by John Marshall, F.K.S., in some races of Man. Medical Times, 
 
 Surgeon to University College Hos- October 1862, p. 419. 
 pital. See also on this subject Pro- f Philosophical Transactions, 1862, 
 
 fessor Rolleston on the slight degree p. 185. 
 
CHAP. xxiv. OF MAN AND APES COMPARED. 489 
 
 the presence of both the hippocampus minor and the poste 
 rior cornu. 
 
 Tiedemann had expressly stated that ' the third or hinder 
 lobe in the ape covered the cerebellum as in Man,'* and as 
 to his negative evidence in respect to the internal structure 
 of that lobe, it can have no weight whatever against the 
 positive proofs obtained to the contrary by a host of able 
 observers. Even before Tiedemann's work was published, 
 Kuhl had dissected, in 1820, the brain of the spider-monkey 
 (Ateles beelzebutli), and had given a figure of a long pos 
 terior cornu to the lateral ventricle, which he had described 
 as such.f 
 
 The general results arrived at by the English anatomists 
 already cited, and by Professor Eolleston in various papers 
 on the same subject, have thus been briefly stated by Pro 
 fessor Huxley : 
 
 6 Every lemur which has yet been examined has its cere 
 bellum partially uncovered, its posterior lobe with the con 
 tained posterior cornu and hippocampus minor more or less 
 rudimentary. Every marmoset, American monkey, Old 
 World monkey, baboon or man-like ape, on the contrary, 
 has its cerebellum entirely covered, a large posterior cornu, 
 and a well-developed hippocampus minor. 
 
 ' In many of these creatures, such as the Saimiri (Chryso- 
 thrix), the cerebral lobes overlap and extend much farther 
 behind the cerebellum in proportion than they do in Man.'J 
 
 It is by no means pretended that these conclusions of 
 British observers as to the affinity in cerebral structure of 
 Man and the Primates, are new, but, on the contrary, that 
 they confirm the inductions previously made by the principal 
 continental teachers of the last and present generations, such 
 
 * Tiedemann, Icones cerebri Simi- fart am Main, 1820. 
 arum, &c., p. 48. { Huxley, 
 
 f BeitragezurZoologie,&c., Frank- 
 
490 STRUCTURE OF BRAIN CHAP. xxiv. 
 
 as Tiedemann, Cuvier, Serres, Leuret, Wagner, Schroeder van 
 der Kolk, Vrolik, Grratiolet, and others. 
 
 At a late meeting of the British Association (1862), Pro 
 fessor Owen read a paper e On the brain and limb characters 
 of the Gorilla as contrasted with those of Man,' * in which, 
 without alluding to the disclaimer by the Dutch anatomists 
 of their defective plates, now so widely circulated in Eng 
 land, he observes, that in the gorilla the cerebrum ' extends 
 over the cerebellum, not beyond it.' This statement, although 
 slightly at variance with one published the year before 
 (1861) by Professor Huxley, who maintains that it does pro 
 ject beyond, is interesting as correcting the description of the 
 same brain given by Professor Owen in that year, in a 
 lecture to the Eoyal Institution, in which a considerable part 
 of the cerebellum of the gorilla was represented as uncovered.! 
 In the same memoir, it is remarked, that in the Maimon 
 Baboon the cerebrum not only covers but f extends backwards 
 even beyond the cerebellum.' J This baboon, therefore, 
 possesses a posterior lobe, according to every description 
 yet given of such a lobe, including a new definition of the 
 same lately proposed by Professor Owen. For the posterior 
 lobe was formerly considered to be that part of the cerebrum 
 which covers the cerebellum, whereas Professor Owen defines 
 it as that part which covers the posterior third of the cere 
 bellum, and extends beyond it. 
 
 We may, therefore, consider the attempt to distinguish 
 the brain of Man from that of the ape on the ground of 
 newly-discovered cerebral characters, presenting differences 
 in kind, as virtually abandoned by its originator, and if the 
 
 * Medical Times and Gazette, Oc- 30, p. 434. 
 
 tober 1862, p. 373. j For Beport of Professor Owen's 
 
 f Athenaeum Journal Report of Cambridge British Association Paper, 
 
 Royal Institution, Lecture, March 23, see Medical Times, October 11, 1862, 
 
 1861, and reference to it by Pro- p. 373. 
 
 fessor Owen as to Gorilla, ibid. March Annals, ibid. p. 457. 
 
CHAP. xxiv. OF MAN AND APES COMPARED. 491 
 
 sub-class Archencephala is to be retained, it must depend on 
 differences in degree, as, for example, the vast increase of the 
 brain in Man, as compared with that of the highest ape, ' in 
 absolute size, and the still greater superiority in relative size 
 to the bulk and weight of the body.' * 
 
 * If we ask why this character, though well known to Cuvier 
 and other great anatomists before our time, was not consi 
 dered by them to entitle Man, physically considered, to claim 
 a more distinct place in the group called Primates, than that 
 of a separate order, or, according to others, a separate genus 
 or family only, we shall find the answer thus concisely 
 stated by Professor Huxley in his new work, before cited : 
 * So far as I am aware, no human cranium belonging to 
 an adult man has yet been observed with a less cubical 
 capacity than 62 cubic inches, the smallest cranium observed 
 in any race of men, by Morton, measuring 63 cubic inches ; 
 while on the other hand, the most capacious gorilla skull 
 yet measured has a content of not more than 34^ cubic 
 inches. Let us assume, for simplicity's sake, that the 
 lowest man's skull has twice the capacity of the highest 
 gorilla's. No doubt this is a very striking difference, but 
 it loses much of its apparent, systematic value, when viewed 
 by the light of certain other equally indubitable facts re 
 specting cranial capacities. 
 
 ' The first of these is, that the difference in the volume of 
 the cranial cavity of different races of mankind is far greater, 
 absolutely, than that between the lowest man and the highest 
 ape while, relatively, it is about the same; for the largest 
 human skull measured by Morton contained 114 cubic 
 inches, that is to say, had very nearly double the capacity of 
 the smallest, while its absolute preponderance of over 50 
 cubic inches is far greater than that by which the lowest 
 
 * Owen, ibid. p. 373." 
 
492 BRAIN OF MAN AND APE COMPARED. CHAP. xxiv. 
 
 adult male human cranium surpasses the largest of the 
 gorillas (62 32J = 27 J). Secondly, the adult crania of 
 gorillas which have as yet been measured, differ among 
 themselves by nearly one-third, the maximum capacity being 
 34-5 cubic inches, the minimum 24 cubic inches; and, 
 thirdly, after making all due allowance for difference of size, 
 the cranial capacities of some of the lower apes fall nearly as 
 much, relatively, below those of the higher apes, as the latter 
 fall below man.' * 
 
 Are we then to conclude, that differences in mental power 
 have no intimate connection with the comparative volume of 
 the brain ? We cannot draw such an inference, because the 
 highest and most civilised races of Man exceed in the average 
 of their cranial capacity the lowest races, the European 
 brain, for example, being larger than that of the negro, and 
 somewhat more convoluted and less symmetrical, and those 
 apes, on the other hand, which approach nearest to Man in the 
 form and volume of their brain being more intelligent than 
 the Lemurs, or still lower divisions of the mammalia, such as 
 the Eodents and Marsupials, which have smaller brains. But 
 the extraordinary intelligence of the elephant and dog, so far 
 exceeding that of the larger part of the Quadrumana, although 
 their brains are of a type much more remote from the human, 
 may serve to convince us how far we are as yet from under 
 standing the real nature of the dependence of intellectual 
 superiority on cerebral structure. 
 
 Professor Kolleston, in reference to this subject, remarks, 
 that ' even if it were to be proved that the differences between 
 Man's brain and that of the ape's are differences entirely of 
 quantity, there is no reason, in the nature of things, why so 
 many and such weighty differences in degree should not 
 amount to a difference in kind. 
 
 * Huxley, On the Eelation of Man to the rest cf the Animal Kingdom. 
 London, 1863. 
 
CHAP. XXIV. INTELLIGENCE OF LOWER ANIMALS. 493 
 
 * Differences of degree and differences of kind are, it is true, 
 mutually exclusive terms in the language of the schools ; but 
 whether they are so also in the laboratory of Nature, we may 
 very well doubt.'* 
 
 The same physiologist suggests, that as there is con 
 siderable plasticity in the human frame, not only in youth 
 and during growth, but even in the adult, we ought 
 not always to take for granted, as some advocates of the 
 developement theory seem to do, that each advance in 
 psychical power depends on an improvement in bodily struc 
 ture, for why may not the soul, or the higher intellectual and 
 moral faculties, play the first instead of the second part in a 
 progressive scheme ? 
 
 
 
 Intelligence of the lower Animals compared to that of Man. 
 
 Ever since the days of Leibnitz, metaphysicians who have 
 attempted to draw a line of demarcation between the intelli 
 gence of the lower animals and that of Man, or between 
 instinct and reason, have experienced difficulties analogous 
 to those which the modern anatomist encounters when he 
 tries to distinguish the brain of an ape from that of Man by 
 some characters more marked than those of mere size and 
 weight, which vary so much in individuals of the same 
 species, whether simian or human. 
 
 Professor Agassiz, after declaring that as yet we scarcely 
 possess the most elementary information requisite for a 
 scientific comparison of the instincts and faculties of animals 
 with those of Man, confesses that he cannot say in what the 
 mental faculties of a child differ from those of a young chim 
 panzee. He also observes, that ( the range of the passions of 
 
 * Keport of a Lecture delivered at Man and Animals. Medical Gazette, 
 the Koyal Institution, by Professor March 15, 1862, p. 262. 
 
 George Eolleston, On the Brain of 
 
494 INTELLIGENCE OP LOWER ANIMALS. CHAP. xxiv. 
 
 animals is as extensive as that of the human mind, and I am 
 at a loss to perceive a difference of kind between them, how 
 ever much they may differ in degree, and in the manner in 
 which they are expressed. The gradations of the moral 
 faculties among the higher animals and Man are, moreover, 
 so imperceptible, that to deny to the first a certain sense of 
 responsibility and consciousness, would certainly be an exag 
 geration of the difference between animals and Man. There 
 exists, besides, as much individuality within their respective 
 capabilities among animals as among Man, as every sports 
 man, or every keeper of menageries, or every farmer and 
 shepherd can testify, who has had a large experience with wild, 
 or tamed, or domesticated animals. This argues strongly in 
 favour of the existence in every animal of an immaterial 
 principle, similar to that which, by its excellence and superior 
 endowments, places Man so much above animals. Yet the 
 principle exists unquestionably, and whether it be called 
 soul, reason, or instinct, it presents, in the whole range of 
 organised beings, a series of phenomena closely linked to 
 gether, and upon it are based not only the higher manifes 
 tations of the mind, but the very permanence of the specific 
 differences which characterise every organ. Most of the 
 arguments of philosophy in favour of the immortality of Man 
 apply equally to the permanency of this principle in other 
 living beings.' * 
 
 Professor Huxley, when commenting on a passage in 
 Professor Owen's memoir, above cited (p. 481), argues that 
 there is a unity in psychical as in physical plan among ani 
 mated beings, and adds, that although he cannot go so far as 
 to say that 'the determination of the difference between 
 Homo and Pithecus is the anatomist's difficulty,' yet no 
 impartial judge can doubt that the roots, as it were, of those 
 
 * Contributions to the Natural History of the United States of North 
 America, vol. i. part i. pp. 60, 64. 
 
CHAP. xxiv. MAN A DISTINCT KINGDOM. 495 
 
 great faculties which confer on Man his immeasurable supe 
 riority above all other animate things are traceable far down 
 into the animate world. The dog, the cat, and the parrot, 
 return love for our love, and hatred for our hatred. They are 
 capable of shame and of sorrow, and, though they may have 
 no logic nor conscious ratiocination, no one who has watched 
 their ways can doubt that they possess that power of rational 
 cerebration which evolves reasonable acts from the premises 
 furnished by the senses a process which takes fully as large 
 a share as conscious reason in human activity.* 
 
 Grounds for referring Man to a distinct Kingdom of 
 Nature. 
 
 None of the authors above cited, while they admit so fully 
 the analogy which exists between the faculties of Man and 
 the inferior animals, are disposed to underrate the enormous 
 gap which separates Man from the brutes, and if they 
 scarcely allow him to be referable to a distinct order, and 
 much less to a separate sub-class, on purely physical grounds, 
 it does not follow that they would object to the reasoning of 
 M. Quatrefages, who says, in his work on the Unity of the 
 Human Species, that Man must form a kingdom by himself 
 if once we permit his moral and intellectual endowments to 
 have their due weight in classification. 
 
 As to his organisation, he observes, 'We find in the 
 mammalia nearly absolute identity of anatomical structure, 
 bone for bone, muscle for muscle, nerve for nerve 
 similar organs performing like functions. It is not by a 
 vertical position on his feet, the os sublime of Ovid, which 
 he shares with the penguin, nor by his mental faculties, 
 which, though more developed, are fundamentally the same 
 
 * Natural History Keview, No. 1, p. 68, January 1861. 
 
496 MAN A DISTINCT KINGDOM. CHAP. xxiv. 
 
 as those of animals, nor by his powers of perception, will, 
 memory, and a certain amount of reason, nor by articulate 
 speech, which he shares with birds and some mammalia, and 
 by which they express ideas comprehended not only by 
 individuals of their own species but often by Man, nor is it 
 by the faculties of the heart, such as love and hatred, which 
 are also shared by quadrupeds and birds, but it is by some 
 thing completely foreign to the mere animal, and belonging 
 exclusively to Man, that we must establish a separate king 
 dom for him (p. 21). These distinguishing characters,' he 
 goes on to say, ( are the abstract notion of good and evil, 
 right and wrong, virtue and vice, or the moral faculty, and a 
 belief in a world beyond ours, and in certain mysterious 
 beings, or a Being of a higher nature than ours, whom we 
 ought to fear or revere ; in other words, the religious faculty.' 
 P. 23. 
 
 By these two attributes, the moral and the religious, not 
 common to man and the brutes, M. Quatrefages proposes to 
 distinguish the human from the animal kingdom. 
 
 But he omits to notice one essential character, which 
 Dr. Sumner, the late Archbishop of Canterbury, brought out 
 in strong relief fifty years ago in his ' Eecords of Creation.' 
 c There are writers,' he observes, ' who have taken an extra 
 ordinary pleasure in levelling the broad distinction which 
 separates Man from the Brute Creation. Misled to a false 
 conclusion by the infinite variety of Nature's productions, 
 they have described a chain of existence connecting the 
 vegetable with the animal world, and the different orders of 
 animals one with another, so as to rise by an almost imper 
 ceptible gradation from the tribe of Simise to the lowest of 
 the human race, and from these upwards to the most refined. 
 But if a comparison were to be drawn, it should be taken, 
 not from the upright form, which is by no means confined to 
 mankind, nor even from the vague term reason, which cannot 
 
CHAP. xxiv. MAN'S IMPROVABLE REASON. 497 
 
 always be accurately separated from instinct, but from that 
 power of progressive and improvable reason, which is Man's 
 peculiar and exclusive endowment. 
 
 ' It has been sometimes alleged, and may be founded on 
 fact, that there is less difference between the highest brute 
 animal and the lowest savage than between the savage and 
 the most improved Man. But, in order to warrant the pre 
 tended analogy, it ought to be also true that this lowest 
 savage is no more capable of improvement than the Chim 
 panzee or Orang-outang. 
 
 ' Animals,' he adds, ' are born what they are intended to 
 remain. Nature has bestowed upon them a certain rank, 
 and limited the extent of their capacity by an impassible 
 decree. Man she has empowered and obliged to become the 
 artificer of his own rank in the scale of beings by the peculiar 
 gift of improvable reason.' * 
 
 We have seen that Professor Agassiz, in his Essay on Classi 
 fication, above cited (p. 494), speaks of the existence in every 
 animal of ( an immaterial principle similar to that which, by 
 its excellence and superior endowments, places man so much 
 above animals ; ' and he remarks, ' that most of the arguments 
 of philosophy in favour of the immortality of man, apply 
 equally to the permanency of this principle in other living 
 beings.' 
 
 Although the author has no intention by this remark to 
 impugn the truth of the great doctrine alluded to, it may be 
 well to observe, that if some of the arguments in favour of a 
 future state are applicable in common to man and the lower 
 animals, they are by no means those which are the weightiest 
 and most relied on. It is no doubt true that, in both, the 
 identity of the individual outlasts many changes of form 
 and structure which take place during the passage from the 
 
 * Records of Creation, vol. ii. chap. ii. 2nd ed. 1816. 
 K K 
 
498 ABSENCE OF INTERMEDIATE CHAP. xxiv. 
 
 infant to the adult state, and from that to old age, and the 
 loss again and again of every particle of matter which had 
 entered previously into the composition of the body during 
 its growth, and the substitution of new elements in their 
 place, while the individual remains always the same, carries 
 the analogy a step farther. But beyond this we cannot push 
 the comparison. We cannot imagine this world to be a place 
 of trial and moral discipline for any of the inferior animals, 
 nor can any of them derive comfort and happiness from faith 
 in a hereafter. To man alone is given this belief, so con 
 sonant to his reason, and so congenial to the religious -senti 
 ments implanted by nature in his soul, a doctrine which 
 tends to raise him morally and intellectually in the scale of 
 being, and the fruits of which are, therefore, most opposite 
 in character to those which grow out of error and delusion. 
 
 The opponents of the theory of transmutation sometimes 
 argue that, if there had been a passage by variation from the 
 lower Primates to Man, the geologist ought ere this to have 
 detected some fossil remains of the intermediate links of the 
 chain. But what we have said respecting the absence of 
 gradational forms between the recent and pliocene mammalia 
 (p. 436), may serve to show the weakness in the present state 
 of science of any argument based on such negative evidence, 
 especially in the case of man, since we have not yet searched 
 those pages of the great book of nature, in which alone we 
 have any right to expect to find records of the missing links 
 alluded to. The countries of the anthropomorphous apes 
 are the tropical regions of Africa, and the islands of Borneo 
 and Sumatra, lands which may be said to be quite unknown 
 in reference to their pliocene and post-pliocene mammalia. 
 Man is an old world type, and it is not in Brazil, the only 
 equatorial region where ossiferous caverns have yet been ex 
 plored, that the discovery, in a fossil state, of extinct forms 
 allied to the human, could be looked for. Lund, a Danish 
 
 
CHAP. xxiv. FOSSIL, ANTHROPOMORPHOUS SPECIES. 499 
 
 naturalist, found in Brazil, not only extinct sloths and arma- 
 dilloes, but extinct genera of fossil monkeys, but all of the 
 American type, and, therefore, widely departing in their den 
 tition and some other characters from the Primates of the old 
 world.* 
 
 At some future day, when many hundred species of extinct 
 quadrumana may have been brought to light, the naturalist 
 may speculate with advantage on this subject ; at present we 
 must be content to wait patiently, and not to allow our judge 
 ment respecting transmutation to be influenced by the want 
 of evidence, which it would be contrary to analogy to look 
 for in post- pliocene deposits in any districts, which as yet we 
 have carefully examined. For, as we meet with extinct 
 kangaroos and wombats in Australia, extinct llamas and 
 sloths in South America, so in equatorial Africa, and in 
 certain islands of the East Indian Archipelago, may we hope 
 to meet hereafter with lost types of the anthropoid Primates, 
 allied to the gorilla, chimpanzee, and orang-outang. 
 
 Europe, during the pliocene period, seems not to have 
 enjoyed a climate fitting it to be the habitation of the quad- 
 rumanous mammalia ; but we no sooner carry back our re 
 searches into miocene times, where plants and insects, like 
 those of Oeninghen, and shells, like those of the faluns of the 
 Loire, would imply a warmer temperature both of sea and 
 land, than we begin to discover fossil apes and monkeys north 
 of the Alps and Pyrenees. Among the few species already 
 detected, two at least belong to the anthropomorphous class. 
 One of these, the Dryopithecus of Lartet, a gibbon or long- 
 armed ape, about equal to man in stature, was obtained in the 
 year 1856 in the upper miocene strata at Sansan, near the 
 foot of the Pyrenees in the South of France, and one bone 
 of the same ape is reported to have been since procured from 
 
 * See above, p. 479. 
 
 K K 2 
 
500 HALLAM ON MAN'S PLACE CHAP. xxiv. 
 
 a deposit of corresponding age at Eppelsheim near Darmstadt, 
 in a latitude answering to that of the southern counties of 
 England.* But according to the doctrine of progression it 
 is not in these miocene strata, but in those of pliocene and 
 post-pliocene date, in more equatorial regions, that there 
 will be the greatest chance of discovering hereafter some 
 species more highly organised than the gorilla and chim 
 panzee. 
 
 The only reputed fossil monkey of eocene date, namely, 
 that found in 1840 at Kyson, in Suffolk, and so determined 
 by Professor Owen, has recently been pronounced by the 
 same anatomist, after reexamination, and when he had ampler 
 materials at his command, to be a pachyderm. 
 
 M. Riitimeyer,f however, an able osteologist, referred to in 
 the earlier chapters of this work, has just announced the dis 
 covery in eocene strata, in the Swiss Jura, of a monkey allied 
 to the lemurs, but as he has only obtained as yet a small 
 fragment of a jaw with three molar teeth, we must wait 
 for fuller information before we confidently rely on the 
 claims of his Ccenopithecus lemuroides to take rank as one 
 of the Primates. 
 
 Hallam on Marts place in the Creation. 
 
 Hallam, in his ' Literature of Europe,' after indulging in 
 some profound reflections on 'the thoughts of Pascal,' and 
 the theological dogmas of his school respecting the fallen 
 nature of Man, thus speaks of Man's place in the creation : 
 'It might be wandering from the proper subject of these 
 volumes if we were to pause, even shortly, to inquire whether, 
 while the creation of a world so full of evil must ever 
 remain the most inscrutable of mysteries, we might not be 
 
 * Owen, ' Geologist,' November f Rutimeyer, 'Eocene Saugethiere/ 
 1862. &c. Zurich, 1862. 
 
CHAP. xxiv. IN THE CREATION. 501 
 
 led some way in tracing the connexion of moral and physical 
 evil in mankind, with his place in that creation, and es 
 pecially, whether the law of continuity, which it has not 
 pleased his Maker to break with respect to his bodily struc 
 ture, and which binds that, in the unity of one great type, to 
 the lower forms of animal life by the common conditions of 
 nourishment, reproduction, and self-defence, has not rendered 
 necessary both the physical appetites and the propensities 
 which terminate in self ; whether again, the superior endow 
 ments of his intellectual nature, his susceptibility of moral 
 emotion, and of those disinterested affections which, if not 
 exclusively, he far more intensely possesses than an inferior 
 being above all, the gifts of conscience and a capacity to 
 know Grod, might not be expected, even beforehand, by their 
 conflict with the animal passions, to produce some partial 
 inconsistencies, some anomalies at least, which he could not 
 himself explain in so compound a being. Every link in the 
 long chain of creation does not pass by easy transition into 
 the next. There are necessary chasms, and, as it were, leaps 
 from one creature to another, which, though not exceptions 
 to the law of continuity, are accommodations of -it to a new 
 series of being. If man was made in the image of Grod, he 
 was also made in the image of an ape. The framework of 
 the body of him who has weighed the stars and made the 
 lightning his slave, approaches to that of a speechless brute, 
 who wanders in the forests of Sumatra. Thus standing on 
 the frontier land between animal and angelic natures, what 
 wonder that he should partake of both ! ' * 
 
 The law of continuity here spoken of, as not being violated 
 by occasional exceptions, or by leaps from one creature to an 
 other, is not the law of variation and natural selection above 
 explained (Chap. XXI.), but that unity of plan supposed to 
 
 * Hallam, Introduction to the Literature of Europe, &c., voL iv. p. 162. 
 
502 WHETHER THE LAW OF CONTINUITY CONSISTENT CHAP. xxiv. 
 
 exist in the Divine Mind, whether realised or not materially 
 and in the visible creation, of which the 6 links do not 
 pass by an easy transition ' the one into the other, at least 
 as beheld by us. 
 
 Dr. Asa Gray, an eminent American botanist, to whom we 
 are indebted for a philosophical essay of great merit on the 
 Origin of Species by Variation and Natural Selection, has well 
 observed, when speaking of the axiom of Leibnitz, ( Natura non 
 agit saltatim,' that nature secures her ends, and makes her dis 
 tinctions, on the whole, manifest and real, but without any 
 important breaks or long leaps. e We need not wonder that 
 gradations between species and varieties should occur, or that 
 genera and other groups should not be absolutely limited, 
 though they are represented to be so in our systems. The clas 
 sifications of the naturalist define abruptly where nature more 
 or less blends. Our systems are nothing if not definite.' 
 
 The same writer reminds us that 'plants and animals are 
 so different, that the difficulty of the ordinary observer would 
 be to find points of comparison, whereas, with the naturalist, 
 it is all the other way. All the broad differences vanish one 
 by one as we approach the lower confines of the animal and 
 vegetable kingdoms, and no absolute distinction whatever is 
 now known between them.'* 
 
 The author of an elaborate review of Darwin's ' Origin of 
 Species,' himself an accomplished geologist, declares that if 
 we embrace the doctrine of the ( continuous variation of all 
 organic forms from the lowest to the highest, including man 
 as the kst link in the chain of being, there must have been 
 a transition from the instinct of the brute to the noble mind 
 of man ; and in that case, ( where,' he ( asks,' are the missing 
 links, and at what point of his progressive improvement did 
 
 * Natural Selection not inconsistent Asa Gray. Triibner & Co., London, 
 with Natural Theology, p. 55, by Dr. 1861. 
 
CHAP. xxiv. WITH BREAKS IN THE SEEIES. 503 
 
 man acquire the spiritual part of his being, and become en 
 dowed with the awful attribute of immortality ? ' * 
 
 Before we raise objections of this kind to a scientific hy 
 pothesis, it would be well to pause and enquire whether there 
 are no analogous enigmas in the constitution of the world 
 around us, some of which present even greater difficulties than 
 that here stated. When we contemplate, for example, the 
 many hundred millions of human beings who now people the 
 earth, we behold thousands who are doomed to helpless im 
 becility, and we may trace an insensible gradation between 
 them and the half-witted, and from these again to individuals 
 of perfect understanding, so that tens of thousands must 
 have existed in the course of ages, who in their moral and 
 intellectual condition, have exhibited a passage from the ir 
 rational to the rational, or from the irresponsible to the 
 responsible. Moreover it has recently been ascertained by 
 the statistics of our metropolis, a city falling by no means 
 below the average standard in regard to health, that one 
 fourth of all the infants which are born, die before they are a 
 month old ; so that we may safely affirm that millions perish 
 on the earth in every century, in the first few hours of their 
 existence. To assign to such individuals their appropriate 
 psychological place in the creation, is one of the unprofitable 
 themes on which theologians and metaphysicians have ex 
 pended much ingenious speculation. 
 
 The philosopher, without ignoring these difficulties, does 
 not allow them to disturb his conviction that ' whatever is, is 
 right,' nor do they check his hopes and aspirations in regard 
 to the high destiny of his species ; but he also feels that it is 
 not for one who is so often confounded by the painful reali 
 ties of the present, to test the probability of theories respecting 
 the past, by their agreement or want of agreement with some 
 
 * Physical Theories of the Phenomena of Life, Frazer's Magazine, July 1860, 
 p. 88. 
 
504 LAW OF CONTINUITY. CRAP. xxir. 
 
 ideal of a perfect universe which those who are opposed to his 
 opinions may have pictured to themselves. 
 
 We may also demur to the assumption that the hypothesis 
 of variation and natural selection obliges us to assume 
 that there was an absolutely insensible passage from the 
 highest intelligence of the inferior animals to the improvable 
 reason of man. The birth of an individual of transcendent 
 genius, of parents who have never displayed any intellectual 
 capacity above the average standard of their age or race, is a 
 phenomenon not to be lost sight of, when we are conjecturing 
 whether the successive steps in advance, by which a progres 
 sive scheme has been developed, may not admit of occasional 
 strides, constituting breaks in an otherwise continuous series 
 of psychical changes. 
 
 The inventors of useful arts, the poets and prophets of the 
 early stages of a nation's growth, the promulgators of new 
 systems of religion, ethics, and philosophy, or of new codes 
 of laws, have often been looked upon as messengers from 
 Heaven, and after their death have had divine honours paid 
 to them, while fabulous tales have been told of the pro 
 digies which accompanied their birth. Nor can we wonder 
 that such notions have prevailed when we consider what 
 important revolutions in the moral and intellectual world 
 such leading spirits have brought about ; and when we reflect 
 that mental as well as physical attributes are transmissible 
 by inheritance, so that we may possibly discern in such leaps 
 the origin of the superiority of certain races of mankind. In 
 our own time the occasional appearance of such extraordi 
 nary mental powers may be attributed to atavism ; but there 
 must have been a beginning to the series of such rare and 
 anomalous events. If, in conformity with the theory of 
 progression, we believe mankind to have risen slowly from 
 a rude and humble starting point, such leaps may have 
 
CHAP. xxiv. TRANSMUTATION AND NATURAL THEOLOGY. 505 
 
 successively introduced not only higher and higher forms and 
 grades of intellect, but at a much remoter period may have 
 cleared at one bound the space which separated the highest 
 stage of the unprogressive intelligence of the inferior animals 
 from the first and lowest form of improvable reason mani 
 fested by man. 
 
 To say that such leaps constitute no interruption to the 
 ordinary course of nature, is more than we are warranted in 
 affirming. In the case of the occasional birth of an indivi 
 dual of superior genius, there is certainly no break in the 
 regular genealogical succession ; and when all the mists of 
 mythological fiction are dispelled by historical criticism, 
 when it is acknowledged that the earth did not tremble at 
 the nativity of the gifted infant, and that the face of heaven 
 was not full of fiery shapes, still a mighty mystery remains 
 unexplained, and it is the order of the phenomena, and not 
 their cause, which we are able to refer to the usual course of 
 nature. 
 
 Dr. Asa Gray, in the excellent essay already cited (p. 502), 
 has pointed out that there is no tendency in the doctrine of 
 Variation and Natural Selection to weaken the foundations of 
 Natural Theology ; for, consistently with the derivative hypo 
 thesis of species, we may hold any of the popular views 
 respecting the manner in which the changes of the natural 
 world are brought about. We may imagine ' that events and 
 operations in general go on in virtue simply of forces commu 
 nicated at the first, and without any subsequent interference, 
 or we may hold that now and then, and only now and then, 
 there is a direct interposition of the Deity ; or, lastly, we may 
 suppose that all the changes are carried on by the immediate 
 orderly and constant, however infinitely diversified, action of 
 the intelligent, efficient Cause.' They who maintain that the 
 origin of an individual, as well as the origin of a species or 
 
506 DOMINION OF MIND OYER MATTEE. CHAP. xxiv. 
 
 a genus, can be explained only by the direct action of the 
 creative cause, may retain their favourite theory compatibly 
 with the doctrine of transmutation. 
 
 Professor Agassiz, having observed that, 'while human 
 thought is consecutive, divine thought is simultaneous,' Dr. 
 Asa Gray has replied that, * if divine thought is simultaneous, 
 we have no right to affirm the same of divine action.' 
 
 The whole course of nature may be the material embodi 
 ment of a preconcerted arrangement ; and if the succession 
 of events be explained by transmutation, the perpetual 
 adaptation of the organic world to new conditions leaves the 
 argument in favour of design, and therefore of a designer, 
 as valid as ever; e for to do any work by an instrument must 
 require, and therefore presuppose, the exertion rather of 
 more than of less power, than to do it directly.' * 
 
 As to the charge of materialism brought against all forms 
 of the developement theory, Dr. Gray has done well to re 
 mind us that f of the two great minds of the seventeenth 
 century, Newton and Leibnitz, both profoundly religious as 
 well as philosophical, one produced the theory of gravita 
 tion, the other objected to that theory, that it was subversive 
 of natural religion.' f 
 
 It may be said that, so far from having a materialistic 
 tendency, the supposed introduction into the earth at succes 
 sive geological periods of life, sensation, instinct, the 
 intelligence of the higher mammalia bordering on reason, 
 and lastly the improvable reason of Man himself, presents 
 us with a picture of the ever-increasing dominion of mind 
 over matter. 
 
 * Asa Gray, ibid. p. 55. f Ibid, p, 31. 
 
INDEX. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 ABB 
 
 A BBEVILLE and Amiens, 102 
 J\. peat of, 109 
 Agassi/ cited, 105, 226 
 
 on Alpine glaciers, 291 
 classification, 397 
 
 immaterial principle in animals, 
 
 497 
 
 Florida coral reefs, 44 
 
 instinct, 493 
 
 theory of Glen Koy roads, 256 
 
 Age of man in reference to glacial 
 
 period, 228 
 
 Ages of stone and bronze, 369 
 Alluvium of Thames, 154 
 
 with flint tools, 93, 106, 112-150, 
 
 166-169 
 Alpine erratics on Jura, 294 
 
 glacial action, 291, 320 
 Alternate generation, 421 
 American Indians, 140 
 
 monkeys, dentition of, 479 
 Amiens flint implements, 95, 114, 132 
 Amoorland mammals, 158, 440 
 Anca, Baron, 176 
 
 Antiquites Celtiques, 94 
 Antiquity of Liege cave bones, 73 
 
 man, 206, 289, 372, 384 
 
 Apes, brain of, compared to human, 
 480 
 
 classification of, 474 
 
 list of genera of, 487 
 Archseopteryx macrurus, 450 
 Archencephala, 481, 491 
 
 BID 
 
 Arcy-sur-Yonne, 151 
 Ardekillen Lake, 30 
 Aristotle, meteorics, 381 
 Aryan hypothesis, 455 
 Aurignac burial place, post-pliocene, 
 (fig. 25), 182 
 
 fossils, antiquity of, 190 
 Aurochs, 14, 190 
 
 Austen, Mr. Godwin, on Kent's hole, 97 
 marine post -pliocene 
 
 shells on Sussex coast, 
 
 281 
 
 Pease Marsh gravel, 161 
 
 Australian skulls, 87 
 
 weapons, 113 
 Aymard, M., 194 
 
 pABINGTON, Mr., 425 
 
 D Bacton whales, 217 
 
 Baillon, M., 126 
 
 Bald, Mr., 53 
 
 Baltic, brackish waters of, 13, 56 
 
 Barrett, Lucas, 451 
 
 Bats in islands, 445, 447 
 
 Beaches, raised, 57 
 
 Beach raised in Fife, 54 
 
 Bedford flint tools, 165 
 
 Behring's Straits, 367 
 
 Belgian caverns, 59 
 
 Bell, Mr., on Bos primigenius, 370 
 
 Bentham, Mr., 425 
 
 Biddenham, near Bedford, 1 63 
 
510 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 BIE 
 
 Bienne, lake of, 29 
 
 Bimana, order of, Blumenbach, 4 74 
 
 Bimanous, term, 475 
 
 Binkhorst, M. Van, 339 
 
 Binney, Mr. E., on marine drift shells 
 
 in Central England, 270 
 Birch, Mr., on Egypt, 37 
 Bison Europseus, 61, 191 
 Bize, cavern of, 59 
 Blumenbach's order Bimana, 474 
 Boetlingk, M., 233 
 Borreby skull (fig. 5), 85 
 Bos bison, 14 
 
 brachyceros, 24 
 
 primigenius, 22, 24 
 trochoceros, 24 
 
 urus, 14 
 
 Boucher de Perthes, cited, 94, 109, 
 
 113, 121,228 
 Boulders floating on ice, 361 
 
 striated, 304 
 
 Brachiopoda fossil, Davidson on, 426 
 Brain, human structure of, 480 
 
 of Bushwoman (fig. 58), 485 
 chimpanzee (fig. 56), 484 and 
 
 (fig. 57) 485 
 
 Eolleston on, 492 
 Brick, burnt, in Egypt, 36 
 Bristow, H. W., cited, 278 
 British Isles, map of, 276 
 
 in glacial period, 278 
 
 Brixham cave, 96 
 
 Brocchi on dying out of species, 393 
 Brongniart, Adolphe, on progression, 
 
 398, 404 
 
 Bronn on progression, 397 
 Bronze, age of, 10, 370 
 Brown, Mr. John, on Shetland insects, 
 
 435 
 
 Bubalus moschatus, 145, 156 
 Buchanan, Mr. John, on Glasgow 
 
 canoes, 47 
 
 Buckland, Dr., 97, 256 
 Buffalo fossil near Berlin, 156 
 Bunsen, Baron, cited, 383 
 Burial rites in post-pliocene period, 
 
 1<2 
 
 Buried hut in Swedish drift, 240 
 Busk, Mr., cited, 11,84,86 
 
 on Borreby skull, 85 
 
 Buteux's sections at St. Acheul, 96,136 
 
 CO A 
 
 pAGLIAKI, 177 
 
 V^ Cairo, 37 
 
 Canada, drift of, 354 
 
 Canche river, 109 
 
 Canoes, buried, of Glasgow, 49 
 
 Capercailzie in shell mounds, 15 
 
 Carnon, skulls at, 56 
 
 Carriden, 51. 
 
 Carses of Clyde, Forth, and Tay, 47, 
 
 51, 54, 283 
 
 Carver, travels in N. America, 189 
 Cashmere, temple, 45 
 Caucasus, languages in, 460 
 Cave deposits, 93 
 
 - bear in Brixham Cave, 100 
 
 of Neanderthal, 75 
 at Bankton, 48 
 
 Brixham, 96 
 
 Cavern of Bize, 59 
 
 Chauvaux, 80 
 
 Engis, 65 
 
 Pondres, near Nismes, 60 
 Caverns round Liege, 63 
 
 Chalk, dislocations of, Denmark, 342 
 
 pinnacle at Sherringham, 221 
 Chambers, Mr. Robert, 241 
 
 on parallel roads, 258, 260 
 
 Chamblon, pile works, 28 
 
 Changes in physical geography, 375 
 
 - of level, 110, 286 
 Charonne, 151 
 
 Charpentier on Alpine glaciers, 291 
 Chavannes, 26 
 Chilian Andes glaciers, 296 
 Chillesford beds, 211 
 Chimpanzee, Marshall on, 488 
 
 brain, 484 
 Chokier cavern, 65, 72 
 Christol, M., 59 
 
 Civilisation, early Egyptian, 380 
 Classification, systems of, 473 
 Cleopatra's Baths, 35 
 
 Clichy, gravel of, 151 
 Climate, 368 
 
 changes of, 364, 368 
 
 of Europe when Amiens' flint 
 
 tools embedded, 142 
 drift of North Ger 
 many was formed,! 57 
 Coast ice, transporting power of, 363 
 
 of Cornwall, 56 
 
INDEX. 
 
 511 
 
 COL 
 
 Cold, increasing, shown by Norfolk 
 and Suffolk tertiaries, 210 
 
 period in France, 138, 142 
 
 : Sicily and Syria, 223 
 
 Contorted drift, 222 
 
 in North Italy, 308 
 
 - strata, Norfolk (figs. 29, 30, 31), 
 220 
 
 at St. Acheul (fig. 21 a), 138 
 
 Copford, Essex, 155 
 
 Copper, age of, 11 
 
 Coral reefs, Florida, 44 
 
 Cornwall, coast of, 56 
 
 Coscinopora globularis figured, 119 
 
 Crag of Suffolk, 209 
 
 Crahay, Professor, 339 
 
 Crannoges, 29 
 
 Crawfurd, Mr., on languages, 455 
 
 Creation by variation, 417 
 
 of species, 394, 423 
 Crete, rising of, 178 
 Cromer forest bed, 212, 214 
 
 granite erratics at, 218 
 
 section of Norfolk cliffs, at 213 
 Currents affect climate, 368 
 Cynotherium, 177 
 
 Cyrena fluminalis, 123, 124, 142, 154, 
 
 159, 161 
 figures of, 124 
 
 DANISH peat, 8, 372 
 - shell mounds, 11, 372 
 Darent, valley of, 161 
 Darwin, Charles, on beach near Lima, 
 
 46 
 
 erratics, 270 
 
 glaciers of Chilian Andes, 
 
 296 
 
 origin of species, 408 
 
 parallel roads, 257 
 
 on progression, 405 
 
 Davidson on fossil brachiopoda, 426 
 
 Dawkins, Mr., 171 
 
 Degeneracy, notion of, controverted, 
 
 378 
 
 Degradation of structure, 412 
 Delabeche, Sir H., his map of British 
 
 Isles upheaved 600 feet, 275, 279 
 Delesse, M., analysis of fossil bones 
 
 by, 187 
 
 ENG 
 
 Delta of Mississippi, 42 
 
 Nile, 33 
 
 Dendrites on flint, figures of 116 
 
 Denise fossil man, 194 
 
 Deshayes on recent species of shells in 
 
 upper miocene strata, 430 
 Desnoyers, M., on antiquity of human 
 
 remains, 61, 181 
 
 Deville on contraction of granite, 286 
 Disco Island, 236 
 Dogs, bones of, in shell mounds, 15 
 
 of bronze age, 25 
 
 D'Orbigny, Alcide, controverts exis 
 tence of recent species of miocene 
 shells, 430 
 
 Dover, Straits of, 284, 367 
 
 Dowler, Dr., 43, 200 
 
 Drew, Mr. F., cited, 278 
 
 Drift and boulders in Ireland, 272 
 
 contorted in Denmark, 342 
 
 in Perthshire, 244 
 Drumkellin bog, 30 
 Dryden on man, quoted, 193 
 Dryopithecus of Lartet, 
 Dumontd'Urville,Papoo dwellings, 19 
 Dundonald, cannel coal ornament at, 
 
 55 
 
 Diirnten, near Zurich, lignite of, 314 
 Dussel river, 75 
 
 T7ARTHQUAKE of 1855 in New 
 i-J Zealand, 349 
 
 New Madrid, 202 
 
 Egypt, borings in Nile valley, 33, 38 
 
 date of buildings in, 380 
 
 Sir G. C. Lewis on, 381 
 Egyptian early civilisation, 380 
 Egyptologists, 38 
 Elephants' fossil teeth, 133 
 Elephas antiquus (fig. 19), 133, 143 
 
 meridionalis (fig. 20), 133 
 
 primigenius (fig. 18), 133 
 
 Torquay, 371 
 
 Elevation of land, in Sardinia, 177 
 
 in valley of Mississippi, 205 
 
 Eliot, Father, translation of Bible, 
 
 467 
 
 Embryological development, 415 
 Engihoul cavern, 65 
 
512 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 ENG 
 
 Engis cave skull, 79, and (fig. 2) 81 
 
 cavern, 65 
 
 England, glacial formations in, 269 
 Engulfed rivers near Liege, 72 
 Eocene monkey of lliitimeyer, 500 
 
 supposed monkey of Kyson, a 
 
 pachyderm, 500 
 
 Equine fossil species in America, 439 
 Erosion, glacial, of lakes, 309 
 Erosive action of glaciers, 315 
 Erratic blocks, map of, 357 
 
 distribution and size of, 362 
 
 in Massachusetts, 355 
 
 England, 280 
 
 Erratics in Ireland, 272 
 
 Sussex, 281 
 
 Sweden, 239 
 
 Escher von der Linth on Alpine 
 
 erratics, 303 
 
 Etheridge, Mr., cited, 278 
 Europe, map of N.W., upheaved 600 
 
 feet, 279 
 Evans, Mr. John, 162, 187 
 
 on archseopteryx, 453 
 
 on flint implements, 117 
 
 Extinct glaciers of Switzerland, 290 
 Extinction of species, 374, 393 
 
 FAJOLES, hill of, 182 
 Ealconer, Dr.. on British species 
 of fossil rhinoceros, 173 
 
 cited, 134, 135, 143, 174, 179, 
 
 199, 216 
 
 on Brixham cave, 98 
 
 elephants, 436 
 
 plagiaulax, 400 
 
 Falunian strata, 430 
 Farquharson of Haughton, 113 
 Fife, raised beach in, 54 
 Finmark, unequal movement in, 348 
 Flint implements, 66, 127, 160-163 
 - figures of, 114, 115, 118 
 
 at Icklingham, 169 
 
 Hoxne, Suffolk, 166 
 
 from St. Acheul, 114 
 
 in ancient gravel, 141 
 
 basin of Seine, 1 50 
 
 . Somme valley, 112 
 
 of Ouse valley, 163 
 
 knives in Aurignac cave, 188 
 
 GER 
 
 Flint knives in Brixham cave, 102 
 valley of Somme, 117 
 
 tools near Bedford, 165 
 
 Florida coral reefs, 44 
 
 Flower, Mr., on quadrumana, 488 
 
 Fluviatile deposits of Thames valley, 
 159 
 
 Fluvio-marine formation at Shoe- 
 bury ness, 129 
 
 Foldings of strata in Island of Moen, 
 342 
 
 Fond du Foret, 70 
 
 Foraminifera, 442 
 
 Forbes, Edward, cited, 283 
 
 Fauna and Flora of British 
 
 Isles, cited, 6, 146, 211, 274, 
 283 
 
 on zero of animal life in Egean, 
 
 268 
 
 Forest bed of Norfolk cliffs, 215 
 
 Forfarshire zone of boulder clay, 249 
 
 Fossil man of Denise, 194 
 
 Fossiliferous strata, tabular view of, 
 7 
 
 Fox, used for food, 24 
 
 France, Central, volcanic action in, 
 198 
 
 Frere, Mr., on flint implements, 104, 
 166 
 
 Fuhlrott, Dr., 76 
 
 p ALLO-ROMAN antiquities, 152 
 
 vl coffins, 134 
 
 remains, 110 
 
 Gangetic mud, 336 
 
 Gamier, M., of Amiens, 134, 143, 145 
 
 Gastaldi, Signer, 305 
 
 Gaudry, M., 104 
 
 Gaulish monuments, 61 
 
 Geikie, Mr., cited, 278 
 
 on buried canoes, 49 
 
 upheaval of Scotland, 50 
 
 Generations, alternate, 421 
 Geneva, Lake of, filled with ice, 299 
 Geographical changes in post-pliocene 
 
 period, 273, 284, 375 
 Geological record, imperfection of, 
 
 448 
 German language in Pennsylvania, 
 
 466 
 
INDEX. 
 
 SI 3 
 
 GIL 
 
 Gillieron, Victor, 28 
 
 Giraffe, 410 
 
 Girard on Egypt, 37 
 
 Glacial changes in Scotland, 248 
 
 , time required for, 284 
 
 deposits of Norfolk cliffs, 218 
 
 succession of, 322 
 
 in Ireland, 270 
 
 drift near Ivrea, 308 
 
 deposits in England, 269 
 
 period, 229, 435 
 a'ge of, 206 
 
 in North America, 351 
 
 - Scotland, 241 
 
 furrows, 293 
 Glacial erosion, 309 
 
 Glaciers, 291, 293, 294, 296, 301, 
 315 
 
 , extinct in Wales, 265 
 
 Glaciers extinct of Alps, intense ac 
 tion of, 304, and (fig. 42) 299 
 
 Morlot on, 301 
 
 Glen Roy, Agassizon, 256 
 
 Glen Roy, map of (fig. 36), 254, 252, 
 
 and see Parallel roads 
 Goffontaine, G9 
 Gorilla, foot of, 477 
 
 Huxley on, 490 
 
 Owen on, 490 
 
 Gosse, II. T., flint tools found by, 
 
 151 
 
 Gower caves, 1 72 
 Gratiolet on brain, 482 
 Gravels, upper and lower, 130 
 Gray, Dr. Asa, on law of continuity, 
 
 501 
 natural selection and 
 
 natural theology, 502, 505 
 Gray's Thurrock, 157 
 Greeks and Romans on early state of 
 
 man, 379 
 
 Greenland, continental ice of, 235 
 Griffiths, Sir R., on Irish drift, 272 
 Grotto di Maccagnone, 175 
 Ground-ice, 139 
 Guildford flint implements, 161 
 Gulf stream affects climate, 364 
 Gunri, Rev. J., on Mundesley strata, 
 
 168, 216, 224 
 Guyot on glaciers, 297 
 
 HOR 
 
 HAARLEM, lake of, 157 
 Hall, James, on trains of erratics 
 
 in United States, 355 
 Hallam on Man's place in creation, 
 
 500 
 
 Hallstadt triassic beds, 449 
 Hanno, 384 
 
 Happisburgh buried forest, 214 
 Harrison, General, on Ohio mounds, 
 
 41 
 Hay den, Mr., on fossil mammalia of 
 
 Niobrara, 438 
 
 Hearne on American Indians, 140 
 Hebert, M., 104, 151, 196 
 Heer, Professor, cited, 215, 237 
 
 on carbonised wheat, 21 
 
 Diirnten fossils, 315 
 
 Oeninghen plants, 431 
 
 fossil plants of Greenland 
 
 and Iceland, 238 
 
 and linger on Atlantic continent, 
 
 440 
 
 Hekekyan Bey, 33 
 
 Heliopolis, 4, 388, 333 
 
 Herodotus on lake dwellings in Thrace, 
 17 
 
 Herschel, Sir J. F., on physical geo 
 graphy and polar cold, 367 
 
 Hesbayan mud or loess, 329 
 
 Hildreth, Dr., 41 
 
 Himalayan mud compared to loess, 
 336 
 
 Hippopotamus, climate and habits of, 
 178 
 
 fossil, 
 
 His, Professor, 26 
 
 Hitchcock, Professor, on glaciers of 
 
 Massachusetts, 355 
 Homer on Thebes, 382 
 Hooker, Dr. on creation by variation, 
 
 134, 157, 142, 157, 172,' 175, 417 
 
 glaciers of Lebanon, 323 
 
 Himalayan shelves or roads, 
 
 261 
 
 progression, whether indi 
 cated by fossil plants, 404 
 
 reversion, 420 
 
 variation in plants of com 
 plex organisation, 442 
 Hopkins on climate, 364 
 Horace on origin of Man, 379 
 
 L L 
 
514 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 HOR 
 Homer, Mr., on borings of alluvial 
 
 plain of the Nile, 34, 33 
 Homes en Vienna basin, 430 
 Hoxne flint implements, 166 
 
 section of strata at (fig. 24), 168 
 Hull, Mr. E., on extinct glaciers in 
 
 England, 269 
 Human bones, 59 
 
 ' absence of, in alluvium of 
 
 Somme, 144 
 in Liege caverns, 64 
 
 fossils at Le Puy, 194 
 Natchez, 200 
 
 remains in loess near Maestricht, 
 
 338 
 Humboldt, Alex., on languages, 461 
 
 William, on languages, 468 
 Humphry, Dr., on characters of Negro, 
 
 91 
 Huxley on brain, 483 
 
 gorilla, 490 
 
 human skulls of Engis and 
 
 Neanderthal, 80 
 difference between reason and 
 
 instinct, 494 
 
 term quadrumanous, 476, 478 
 
 Hysena spelsea, 171 
 Hybridisation, 411 
 
 TCE-ACTION in Norfolk cliffs, 222 
 
 North America, 355 
 
 river beds, 139 
 
 of extinct glaciers, intensity of, 
 
 304 
 
 Icebergs, action of, 230, 361 
 Iceland, Norwegian colony in, 465 
 Icelandic language, 466 
 
 surturbr and, plants of, 238 
 Icklingham flint implements, 169 
 Immortality of the soul, 498 
 Imperfection of geological record, 
 
 448 
 
 Independent creation, 422 
 Indians of Massachusetts, extinction 
 
 of, 467 
 
 Insects, European and American, 434 
 Ireland, glacial formations in, 270 
 Irish lake dwellings, 29 
 Iron, age of, 10 
 Islands, absence of mammalia in, 443 
 
 LAR 
 
 Italian extinct glaciers, 305 
 Ivrea glacial drift, 308 
 
 TAMES, Sir H., cited, 271, 278 
 J Jamieson, T. P., of Ellon, 242 
 
 cited, 278 
 
 on extinct river chan 
 nels, 249 
 
 on glacial period in 
 
 Scotland, 244 
 
 on parallel roads 259 
 
 Jukes, Prof., survey of Ireland, 272 
 Junction and separation of England 
 and Ireland, 282 
 
 the Continent, 
 
 282 
 Jura, Alpine blocks on, 294 
 
 T7ELLER on lake villages, 19 
 
 ' V fishing-huts, 19 
 
 Kent, flint implements in, 162 
 Kent's Hole, cave near Torquay, 97 
 King, Rev. S. W. on Mundesley 
 section, 168, 224 
 
 cited, 214, 215, 217 
 
 Kingsley, Rev. C., 156 
 
 Kitchen -middens, or refuse heaps, 12, 
 
 372 
 
 Kjerulf of Christiania on ice-action 
 in Sweden, 234 
 
 T AKE-BASINS, origin of, 309 
 J-J dwelling, post-glacial in Italy, 
 319 
 
 Swiss, Plate L, frontispiece, 17, 
 
 373 
 
 of Haarlem, 147 
 Lamarck's theory, 389 
 
 objections to, 392 
 
 Lambert, Abbe, on fossil bones of 
 
 Oise valley, 153 
 
 Lament, Mr., on Spitzbergen, 268 
 Languages formed slowly, 465 
 
 changes of, compared to species, 
 
 457 
 
 origin and development of, 454 
 Larcom, Lieut., map of Ireland, 278 
 Lartet, M., 60, 153, 183, 196 
 
INDEX. 
 
 515 
 
 LAR 
 
 Lartet, M., on Dryopithecus, 499 
 Lauder, Sir T. Dick, cited, 255 
 Leech, Mr. T., on flint tools, 162 
 Leidy, Dr., on fossil mammalia of 
 
 United States, 438 
 Lemming of Norway, 157 
 Lepsius, cited, 383 
 Lepus timidus, 23 
 
 Le Puy-en-Velay human fossils, 194 
 Lewis, Sir G. C., 381, 382 
 Liebig on stalactite, 71 
 Liege caverns, 63, 70 
 Life at great depths in ocean, 268 
 Lignite at Uznach, 315 
 Linant Bey, 37 
 Linnaean order, Primates, 474 
 Living languages, number of, 458 
 Lochaber parallel roads, 252 
 Loess at Liege, 74 
 
 fossil shells of (figs. 44, 46), 326 
 
 geographical distribution of, 328 
 
 human remains in, 324 
 
 in basin of Danube, 333 
 Neckar, 332 
 
 nature and origin of, 324 
 near Stuttgart, 331 
 
 of Belgium, 329 
 Odenwald, 330 
 
 position of, 334 
 
 Lohle, Mr., on piles of lake dwellings, 
 
 20 
 London, flint implements in gravel of, 
 
 160 
 Longevity of species in mammalia, 
 
 441 
 Loven, on arctic character of drift 
 
 shells, 57 
 Lower level gravels of Somme Valley, 
 
 108 
 Lubbock, Mr., on Danish shell mounds, 
 
 11 
 
 Bubalus moschatus, 156 
 
 Swiss lake dwellings, 19 
 
 Lund, fossil monkeys found by, in 
 
 Brazil, -i98 
 
 MACANDEEW, Mr., 146 
 Maccagnone, Grotto di, 175 
 M'Enery, Mr., 97 
 
 MEN 
 
 Maclaren, Mr. C., on Pentland hill 
 erratics, 247 
 
 Swiss erratics, 298 
 
 Madeiran Archipelago, 444 
 Maestricht loess, 338 
 Malaise, Professor, 69 
 Malthusian doctrine, 409 
 Mammalia, absence of, in islands, 443 
 
 at Menchecourt, 125 
 
 nineteen species of, in 
 
 Aurignac cave, 185 
 Mammalian fauna in Central France, 
 199 
 
 fossil in drift of Somme, 137 
 of Norfolk cliffs, 216 
 
 longevity of species in, 441 
 
 recent and fossil, 436 
 
 remains in Liege caverns, 64 
 
 scarcity of, in Irish drift, 271 
 
 Mammals of Amoorland, 158 
 
 Man, extermination of species by, 374 
 
 foot of, 476 
 
 migrations of, 376 
 
 Man's age in relation to present fauna, 
 
 289 
 Map by de Mortillet of moraines 
 
 (fig. 43), 306 
 
 of British isles in glacial period 
 
 (fig. 39), 276, (fig. 40) 278 
 
 erratic blocks in U. S., 357 
 
 Europe upheaved 600 feet (fig. 
 
 41), 279 
 
 parallel roads, Glen Eoy (fig. 
 
 36), 254 
 
 Marcel de Serres, 60 
 Marcon, Mr., cited, 315 
 Marietta, mounds at, 41 
 Marmora, Count Albert de la, 177 
 Marshall, Mr. on chimpanzee, 488 
 Massachusetts erratic blocks, 355,359 
 Mastodon, genus, 353, 436 
 
 arvernensis, 226 
 
 giganteus, 351, 353 
 
 Mautort, flints at, near Abbeville, 125 
 Megaceros Hibernicus, 185, 273, 283 
 Meigs, Dr,, 42 
 
 Meilen, lake of Zurich, 18, 26 
 Memphis, 34, 381 
 
 antiquity of, 382 
 Menchecourt, near Abbeville, 121 
 
 mammalia, 125 
 
516 
 
 INDEX 
 
 MEN 
 Menchecourt, fossil shells at, 123^ 
 
 section at, 122 
 Menzaleh, lake, 35 
 Meridional zones of cold, 366 
 Migrations of man, 376 
 
 Miller, Hugh, on progression, 396 
 Milne, Mr., cited, 129 
 Miocene flora of Iceland, 238 
 
 plants and insects, 432 
 Missing links between man and 
 
 animals, 502 
 Mississippi Delta, 42 
 
 section of valley of (fig. 26), 200 
 Moel Tryfane, 267 
 
 Moen, Island of, 342 
 
 Moens klint (figs. 47 and 48), 344 
 
 Molluscs, longevity of species in, 442 
 
 Moore, Mr. C., 401 
 
 Moosseedorf, lake of, 20 
 
 Moraines, of modern glaciers, 293 
 
 in Scotland, 248 . 
 Merges, bronze period, 21 
 Morlot on Swiss glaciers, 301, 220 
 
 . geological archaeology, 110 
 
 delta of Tiniere, 27 
 
 Mortillet, Gabriel de, on lake basins 
 
 310 
 
 map of moraines by, 306 
 
 Morvan, granite boulders from, 151 
 
 Moulin Quignon, 130 
 
 Mounds in valley of Ohio, 39, 41 
 
 of Santos, 41 
 
 Mud produced by glaciers, 325 
 Mudge, Captain, 31 
 Miiller, Max, on languages, 454 
 Mundesley and Hoxne deposits 
 compared, 2 '2 7 
 
 fresh water formation, 223 
 
 section (fig. 33), 224 
 Murchison, Sir B,. L, on Alpine 
 
 glaciers, 296 
 Muswell Hill, 160 
 
 Mutability in vegetable kingdom, 418 
 Mytilus edulis, 13 
 fossil, 178, 240 
 
 1CTATCHEZ, age of deposit, 203 
 li fossil man, 205 
 
 human fossil at, 200 
 
 shells, 201 
 
 OWE 
 
 Natural selection, 407, 413 
 
 and variation, 469 
 
 Neanderthal cave, section of (fig. 1), 76 
 
 skeleton. 76, 375 
 
 skull, 78 and (fig. 3) 82, and (fig. 4) 
 
 83 
 
 Nebraska valley, 439 
 Negro, anatomical character of, 91 
 
 pictures of in Egyptian temples, 385 
 
 race unchanged in Virginia, 386 
 Neozoic strata, 7 
 
 Newbold, Captain, 36 
 New Madrid, earthquake of, 202 
 New Zealand, earthquakes in, 349 
 Nile delta, 33 
 
 mud, 325 
 
 river, 36 
 Niobrara valley, 438 
 Noeggerath, Professor, of Bonn, 128 
 Nomenclature of Tertiaries, 3 
 Norfolk cliffs, section of (fig. 27), 213 
 North America, glacial period in, 351 
 deposits in, 354 
 
 Cape, rising, 58 
 Norway, raised beaches, 57 
 Norwegian colony in Iceland, 465 
 Norwich Crag, 208 
 
 OAK, in Danish peat, 9 
 Ocean, life in at great depths, 268 
 Oeninghen beds, 431 
 Ohio, ancient mounds of valley of, 39 
 
 valley of, 39 
 Oise, valley of, 153 
 Orbitolina concava, 119 
 
 Organic remains, in Scotch boulder 
 
 clay, 250 
 
 variety of in glacial formations, 
 
 267 
 Origin of species by variation and 
 
 natural selection, 407 
 
 and development of languages, 454 
 Oscillations of Alpine glaciers, 292 
 
 of level, 285, 287, 333 
 Ossiferous caves in Sicily, 1 74 
 Ouse, valley, section of, 164 
 flint implements, 163 
 
 Owen, Professor, on human brain, 480 
 
 supposed eocene monkey of 
 
 Kyson, 500 
 
INDEX. 
 
 517 
 
 OWE 
 Owen,Professor, on archseopteryx, 451 
 
 brain of marmoset, 483 
 
 gorilla, 490 
 
 progression, 397 
 
 PALUDINA marginata, 225 
 
 JL Parallel roads, Darwin on, 257 
 
 view of, Plate II., p. 252 
 
 of Glen Roy, 252 
 
 Chambers on, 258 
 
 Jamieson on, 259 
 
 Pajonian lake dwellings, 17 
 
 Pagham erratics near Chichester, 280, 
 
 Pascal's Thoughts, 500 
 
 Paviland skeleton, 98 
 
 Peat, Danish, 8 
 
 antiquity of, 110 
 
 of Somme valley, 106, 108 
 
 rate of growth of, 111 
 Pengelly, Mr., 98 
 Penguin, in shell-mounds, 15 
 Pennsylvania, 466 
 Pertuan, skulls, 56 
 Perthshire, drift in, 244 
 Pertz, Chevalier, 459 
 
 Peru, raised beach, 46 
 
 Phillips, Professor, on erratics of 
 Yorkshire, 270 
 
 Phoca gryppus, 14 
 
 Physical geography, revolutions in, 
 274,375 
 
 Pictet, Professor, 195, 90 
 
 Pierre a Bot, 295 
 
 Pingel, Dr., 237 
 
 Plagiaulax, 400 
 
 Plants, fossils of Norfolk cliffs, 216 
 
 Pleistocene, term explained, 6 
 
 Pliocene, older and newer, terms de 
 fined, 6 
 
 Pont de Thiele, 29 
 
 Post-glacial dislocations, 341 
 
 lake dwelling in Italy, 319 
 Post-pliocene period, 59 
 
 alluvium, with flint implements, 93 
 
 of Somme Valley, 106 
 burying-place at Aurignac, 
 
 181 
 term defined, 5 
 
 tertiary, term defined, 5 
 Pottery, post-pliocene, in Sardinia, 
 
 178 
 
 REI 
 
 Pouchet, George M., 104 
 Pourtalis, M., 44 
 Pozzuoli, 45 
 
 Prestwich, Mr., on Chillesford glacial 
 beds, 211 
 
 his visit to St. Acheul, 103 
 
 discovery of Cyrena at 
 
 Abbeville, 123 
 
 on contorted strata at St. 
 
 Acheul, 138 
 
 cited, 161, 162, 168, 169, 225, 
 
 267,270,376 . 
 
 on ground ice, 139 
 
 ice T holes at St. Acheul, 116 
 
 Precy near Criel, 153 
 Primordial types, 470 
 Primates, Linnean order of, 474 
 Proboscidians, 436 
 Progression, theory of, 395, 472 
 whether botanically true, 405 
 Puggaard, rise of land in Denmark, 
 
 12 
 
 Puggaard's sections, 344 
 Purbeck, oolite fossil mammalia of, 
 400 
 
 AUADRUMANOUS, term, 475 
 ^l why term deceptive, 476 
 Quadrumana, Mr. W. H. Flower on, 
 
 488 
 Quatrefages on unity of species, 
 
 495 
 
 Quedlinburg, 157 
 Quenstedt, Professor, on Bubalus 
 
 moschatus, 186 
 
 RACE and species, 389 
 Races change more slowly than 
 
 languages, 457 
 Raised beach in Peru, 46 
 Rameses, statue of, 38 
 Ramsay, Professor, on flint tools, 117 
 
 cited, 285 
 
 on glaciers of North Wales, 
 
 266 
 
 lake basins, 311 
 
 Ravin, M., 126 
 
 Recent deposits of seas and lakes, 44 
 
 geological term, defined, 5 
 Reindeer in Brixham cave, 99 
 
518 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 REI 
 
 Reindeer, 1000 antlers of, in one 
 fissure, 172 
 
 fossil in South of France, 190 
 Reptilia, retrograde movement of, 402 
 Reversion to original type, 420 
 Rhine, bed of, at Bingen, 128 
 
 - glacial drift of, 303 
 Rhinoceros hemitoecus, 173 
 
 tichorhinus, 156, 186 
 
 eaten by man, 186 
 
 Rhone, extinct glacier, 299 
 
 glacial drift of, 303 
 Richardson, Sir John, on Arctic fossil 
 
 plants, 238 
 Rigollot, Dr., 95 
 
 Rink, Dr. H., on Greenland ice, 235 
 Rise of land in Sardinia, 177 
 Robert, M., on Denise fossil man, 198 
 Roches Moutonnees (fig. 38), 269 
 Rolleston, Professor,, on brain, 488, 
 
 489, 492 
 
 Roman pottery, 110 
 Rosiere, 38 
 Rubus genus, 425 
 Riitimeyer, on Bos primigenius, 370 
 
 Eocene monkey, 500 
 
 vertebrata of lake dwellings, 
 
 22 
 
 s 
 
 T. ACHEUL, 96 
 
 contorted strata (fig. 21 a), 
 
 138 
 
 section of gravel (fig. 21), 135 
 
 St. Cassian beds, 449 
 
 St. George's Channel, 283 
 
 St. Hadelin, 72 
 
 St. Hilaire, Isidore G., on Bimana, 475 
 
 San Giro, 1 75 
 
 Sandstone blocks in gravel of Somme, 
 
 136 
 
 Santos mounds, 41 
 Sardinia, r*e of land in, 177 
 Saxe Weimar, Prince Bernhard of, 
 
 466 
 
 Scandinavia, a centre of erratics, 232 
 once covered with ice, 232 
 Scarcity of human bones, 148 
 Schaaffhausen, Professor, 78 
 Schiller's Indian funeral dirge, 189 
 Schlegel, Professor, on elephant, 438 
 Schmerling, Dr., cited, 63, 145 
 
 SPI 
 Schmerling, Dr., on antiquity of man, 
 
 68 
 
 Schrenck, Dr. von, 158 
 Schroeder van der Kolk, 481, 486 
 Scotch fir in Danish peat, 9 
 
 Cromer forest bed, 215 
 
 lignite of Utznacb, 315 
 
 boulder clay, organic remains in, 
 
 250 
 Scotland, glacial period in, 241 
 
 re-elevation of, 246 
 
 submergence of, 243 
 
 upheaval in, 47 
 
 Scrope, Mr. Poulett, 192, 195 
 Sedgwick, Professor, on progression, 
 
 395 
 Section at Hoxne, 168 
 
 of Aurignac cave (fig. 25), 182 
 
 cliffs at Cromer, 213 
 
 Neanderthal cave (fig. 1), 76 
 
 Ouse valley (fig. 24), 164 
 
 Somme valley, 106 (fig. 16), 
 
 121 
 
 Sefstrom on alternate generation, 421 
 Seine, basin of, 150 
 Sepulchral grotto at Aurignac, 182 
 Sequoia, in Disco Island, 237 
 Serapis, temple of, 45 
 Shell-mounds, Danish, 11 
 Shoeburyness fluvio-marine formation, 
 
 129 
 
 Sicily, cold period in, 323 
 Sicilian ossiferous caves, 174 
 Silver pits off the Humber, 277 
 Skull in Engis cave 79, and (fig. 2) 81 
 
 of Borreby (fig. 5), 80 
 
 Neanderthal (fig. 3), 82, 
 
 (fig. 4), 83 
 Skulls at Carnon, 56 
 
 at Pertuan, 56 
 
 of stone period, 15 
 Smith, Dr. Andrew, 179 
 
 J., of Jordanhill, 55 
 Solenhofen, fossil bird found in stone 
 
 of, 451 
 Somme valley, 93, 106 
 
 flint tools of, 112 
 
 section of, 122 
 
 Species, extinction of, 393 
 
 and race, 389 
 Spirifer trigonalis, 427 
 
INDEX. 
 
 519 
 
 SPO 
 
 Sponges from St. Acheul, 119 
 Spontaneous generation, 391 
 Spratt, Cuptain, on cave in Malta, 438 
 
 on change of level in Crete, 178 
 
 Spring, Dr., 80 
 
 Squier and Davis, 39 
 
 Stalactite, Liebig on, 71 
 
 Stalactites in caves, 71 
 
 Staring's geological map of Holland, 
 
 147 
 Steenstrup on age of peat, 17 
 
 fossils in peat, 9 
 
 Icelandic fossil plants, 238 
 
 Stereognathus ooliticus, 401 
 Stockaded islands in Ireland, 30 
 Stone, age of, 10 
 
 and bronze, ages of, 369 
 Stonesfield oolite, fossil mammalia 
 
 of, 401 
 
 Strathmore, 246 
 
 Stuttgart, fossil mammifer of trias 
 at, 401 
 
 Striated glacial pebbles and blocks, 304 
 
 Submergence of land, 376, 378 
 
 in glacial period, 276, 278, 
 
 285 
 
 North Wales, 267 
 
 Scotland, 243 
 
 Wales, 285 
 
 Subsidence of British Isles, 278 
 
 land, 288 
 
 Successive changes, time required for, 
 284 
 
 Suffolk tertiaries or crags, 208 
 
 Sum tier's, Records of Creation, 481, 
 496 
 
 Sunderbunds, 374 
 
 Superficial traces of glaciers and ice 
 bergs, 230 
 
 Sussex erratics, 281 
 
 Sus scrofa palustris, 25 
 
 Swedish raised beaches, 57 
 
 Swiss extinct glaciers, 290 
 
 lake dwellings, 17, 373 
 Systems of classification, 473 
 Syria, cold period in, 323 
 
 rpABULAR view of strata, 7 
 -L Taxodium distichum, 43 
 Tay, estuary of, 54 
 
 VAR 
 
 Tertiary strata, classification of, 3 
 Thames alluvium, 154 
 
 valley, fluviatile deposits of, 159 
 Thebes, 381 
 
 antiquity of, 382 
 
 Theory of progression, 395, 397, 398, 
 
 404 
 
 objections to, 404, 472 
 
 Thothmes, Egyptian King, 37 
 Tiedemann on negro's brain, 481 
 
 brain of ape, 489 
 
 Till in Norfolk, 219 
 
 Time required for changes of glacial 
 
 period, 284 
 Tiniere, cone of, 321 
 Tiuiere, Morlot on, 27 
 Torquay, caves near, 96 
 Torquay, elephas primigenius at, 371 
 Tournal, M., 59 
 Transmutation theory, 424, 471 
 
 arguments for and against, 446 
 Trias of Austrian Alps, 449 
 
 Stuttgart, 401 
 
 Trimmer on Moel Tryfane, 267 
 Trimmer's maps of glacial period, 
 
 273, 162 
 Troyon on lake habitations, 20 
 
 TT DDE VALLA, 57 
 
 U Unger on Atlantic continent, 440 
 
 miocene plants, 432 
 
 Unio littoralis (fig. 22), 158 
 Unity of origin of man, 387 
 
 races, 386 
 
 species, Quatrefages on, 495 
 
 Upheaval and subsidence, causes of, 
 288 
 
 in Scotland, 47 
 Wales, 282 
 
 of land at North Cape, 58 
 
 rate of. 58, 178 
 
 Upsala erratics, 240 
 
 Ursus arctos, 22, 109 
 - spelffius, 101 
 Utznach near Zurich, lignite of, 314 
 
 TTANESSA atalanta, 434 
 V Variation, 407, 414 
 
520 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 VAR 
 
 Varieties, incipient species, 416 
 Variation and natural selection, 469 
 
 wide range of, 429 
 Vedas, 46 
 
 Vegetable kingdom, mutability in, 41 8 
 Vegetation, changes of, in, human 
 
 period, 16, 372 
 
 Venetz on Alpine glaciers, 291 
 Vertebrata in Danish mounds, 14 
 
 in lake dwellings, 23 
 
 unknown in oldest rocks, 403 
 Vestiges of creation, 407 
 Vibraye, Marquis de, 151 
 Volcanic action in Central France, 
 
 198 
 
 Vrolik, on anatomy of quadrumana, 
 481, 486 
 
 TTfALES, extinct glaciers in, 265 
 Vf submergence of, 285 
 upheaval in, 282 
 Wall of Antonine. 51 
 Wallace, Mr. Alfred, 408,419 
 
 on transmutation, 411 
 
 Wallich, Dr., on alluvium of Ganges, 
 337 
 
 starfish at great depth, 268 
 
 Wangen, Lake of Constance, 20 
 Welsh glacial drift, 366 
 Wexford drift, 271 
 
 ZTJR 
 
 Whale at Dunmore, 53 
 
 fossil, Airthrie, 53 
 Whales at Bacton, 217 
 Whitaker, Mr. W., cited, 278 
 Wicklow mountain, drifts of, 271 
 Williamson, Mr., on Wokey hole, 171 
 Wilkinson, Sir Gardner, 35 
 Wokey Hole, 1 70 
 
 Wollaston, T. V, on insects, 435 
 Wood, Lieut.- Col., 172 
 
 Mr. Searles, his monograph of 
 crag shells, 209 
 
 Woodward, Mr. S. P., on crag fossils, 
 209 
 
 Words, new ones introduced, 462 
 
 Works of art in post-pliocene allu 
 vium, 150 
 
 Wyatt, Mr. Digby, on Irish lake 
 dwellings, 30 
 
 Mr. James, on flint tools near 
 Bedford, 163 
 
 Wylie on lake habitations, 1 8 
 
 L7VERDUN, 28 
 
 r7OSTERA marina in mounds, 16 
 J Zurich, lake of, 314 
 pile dwellings in, 18 
 
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