GEOLOGY. 579 



The discoveries, then, of geologists and archaeologists re- 

 veal to us that vestiges of antediluvian races exist in the 

 ground. Lyell, Lartet, and M. Boucher de Perthes are 

 unanimous on this point. 



Is it not, then, strange to hear that at the very time when 

 modern science was making every effort to deny that man 

 and the great races of mammals were contemporary, the 

 affirmative was in some measure already interwoven in 

 the rhapsodical traditions of the North American savages ? 

 Jefferson says the aborigines are convinced that the masto- 

 dons, the bones of which are so often found in their coun- 

 try, lived there at the same time as their forefathers, but 

 that, as they (the mastodons) destroyed all the animals which 

 were useful to men, the Great Spirit destroyed them all 

 with his thunderbolts, except the strongest of their males, 

 the mail-clad brow of which shook off the bolts as they 

 struck him. 



The lake dwellings, of which so many remains have been 

 recently discovered in the lakes of Switzerland, Scotland, 

 and Denmark, also attest the antiquity of man on the globe. 

 It is no longer possible nowadays to deny that these sin- 

 gular constructions, raised on piles, served in pre-historic 

 times to shelter the first human races. We can no longer 

 doubt respecting this point, now that among these primitive 

 vestiges of art have been found different implements which 

 their inhabitants made use of, mill-stones, stone knives 

 and weapons, besides collars and bracelets in bronze or Bal- 

 tic amber, and even human skeletons. 1 



1 Our learned naturalist, Victor Meunier, gives the following curious details 



about the lacustrine dwellings 



O 



