608 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



fish-scales, " for I would as lief start with vertebrated animals and 

 fresh water as with a universal ocean and the simplest forms of animal 

 life." Perfect loyalty to fact, a complete readiness to accept anything, 

 provided it can be shown to be true, marks Lyell's procedure through- 

 out. It is very clearly seen in the last great work of his life, the 

 " Antiquity of Man." As a matter of taste, it is obvious that Lyell 

 did not relish the application of evolutionism to his own species. But 

 he found that the facts compelled him, and he gave in. No book ever 

 published not even the " Origin of Species " or the " Descent of 

 Man " did so much to shake the common belief in the origin of our 

 race : so far as all thinking Europe was concerned, Lyell simply de- 

 molished the current cosmogonies. More than that, by incorporating 

 in the book Professor Huxley's remarks about the Neandearthal skull 

 and much similar matter, he advertised the new creed in the animal 

 origin of man with all the weight of his European reputation. The 

 last years of his life were almost wholly spent in investigating this 

 question of antiquity. Fifty years before, when he was at Oxford, he 

 noted the occurrence of certain " pear-shaped flints " at Norwich, which 

 he supposed must have " owed their shapes entirely to animals " ; and 

 all through his life he had been especially interested in the glacial 

 period and its remains, the border-land where geology merges imper- 

 ceptibly into archaeology and history. But from the Darwinian era 

 onward he turned his attention almost entirely to the question of 

 antiquity. He inspected everywhere, and got abundant specimens 

 from abroad, at times not without ludicrous difficulties. Dr. Falconer 

 had procured him a fine cast of a fossil rhinoceros ; at Naples the 

 police voted it an infernal machine, and confiscated it accordingly. 

 After a time it was restored, but the priests kept Dr. Falconer's osteo- 

 logical notes, which they declared to be treasonable, as no doubt they 

 were from an ecclesiastical point of view. After some years spent in 

 hunting palseoliths and weighing evidence (which involved some 

 heavy field-work for so old a man, in the Bedford drift, the Liege 

 and Maestricht caves, and so forth), the "Antiquity of Man" finally 

 appeared in February, 1863. In three months he had sold five thousand 

 copies, a remarkable success for such a book. It was his last great 

 serious work. The remaining years of his life, though still actively 

 spent, were devoted mainly to reconsideration and revision of what 

 had been already done. 



In February, 1875, his great and useful life closed quietly and 

 worthily. In reviewing the seventy-eight years of his labors, it is 

 impossible to avoid seeing throughout how admirably his opportuni- 

 ties were adapted to the work he had to do. He was the right man, 

 to start with ; but the lines also fell to him in the right places. With 

 equal abilities, equal ardor, and equal singleness of purpose, he could 

 not have done so much without the happy conjunction of circum- 

 stances as well. On the other hand, the lesson of his valuable life 



