GEOLOGY. 281 



been of about the same date ; but what M. Lartet has called the rein- 

 deer period of the south of France was probably anterior, and con- 

 nected with a somewhat colder climate. Of still higher antiquity was 

 that age of ruder implements of stone such as were buried in the 

 fluviatile drift of Amiens and Abbeville, and which were mingled in the 

 same gravel with the hones of extinct quadrupeds, such as the ele- 

 phant, rhinoceros, bear, tiger, and hyena. Between the present era 

 and that of those earliest vestiges yet discovered of our race, valleys 

 have heeii deepened and widened, the course of subterranean rivers 

 which once flowed through caverns has been changed, and many 

 species of wild quadrupeds have disappeared. The bed of the sea, 

 moreover, has in the same ages been lifted up, in many places hun- 

 dreds of feet above its former level, and the outlines of many a coast 

 entirely altered. 



MMl de Vernenil and Lartet have recently found, near Madrid, 

 fossil teeth of the African elephant, in old valley-drift, containing Hint 

 implements of the same antique type as those of Amiens and Abbe- 

 ville. Proof of the same elephant having inhabited Sicily in the Post- 

 pliocene and probably within the Human period had previously been 

 brought to light by Baron Anca, during his exploration of the bone- 

 caves of Palermo. We have now, therefore, evidence of man having 

 coexisted in Europe with three species of elephant, two of them ex- 

 tinct (namely, the mammoth and the Eleplias antiquus), and a third 

 the same as that which still survives in Africa. As to the first of 

 these, the mammoth, I am aware that some writers contend that it 

 could not have died out many tens of thousands of years before our 

 time, because its flesh has been found preserved in ice, in Siberia, in 

 so fresh a state as to serve as food for dogs, bears, and wolves ; but 

 this argument seems to me fallacious. Middendorf in 1843, after 

 digging through some thickness of frozen soil in Siberia, came down 

 upon an icy mass, in which the carcass of a mammoth was imbedded, 

 so perfect that, among other parts, the pupil of its eye was taken out, 

 and is now preserved in the Museum of Moscow. No one will deny 

 that this elephant had lain for several thousand years in its icy en- 

 velop ; and if it had been left undisturbed, and the cold had gone on 

 increasing, for myriads of centuries, we might reasonably expect that 

 the frozen ilesh might continue undecayed until a second glacial 

 period had passed away. 



When speculations on the long series of events which occurred in 

 the glacial and postglacial periods are indulged in, the imagination is 

 apt to take alarm at the immensity of* the time required to interpret 

 the monuments of these ages, all referable to the era of existing 

 species. In order to abridge the number of centuries which would 

 otherwise be indispensable, a disposition is shown by many to mag- 

 nify the rate of change in prehistoric times, by investing the causes 

 which have modified the animate and inanimate world with extraor- 

 dinary and excessive energy. It is related of a great Irish orator of 

 our day, that when he was about to contribute somewhat parsimoni- 

 ously towards a public charity, he was persuaded by a friend to make 

 a more liberal donation. In doing so he apologized for his first ap- 

 parent want of generosity, by saying that his early life had been a 

 constant struggle with scanty means, and that " they who are born to 

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