02 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of the theological side as the Duke of Argyll has been forced to 

 yield to the evidence. 



Of attempts to make an exact chronological statement throw- 

 in «• light on the length of the various prehistoric periods, the 

 most notable have been those by M. Morlot, on the accumulated 

 strata of the Lake of Geneva ; by Gillieron, on the silt of Lake 

 Neuf chatel ; by Horner, in the delta deposits of Egypt ; and by 

 Riddle, in the delta of the Mississippi. But while these have 

 failed to give anything like an exact result, all these investiga- 

 tions together point to the one great truth so amply established, 

 of the vast antiquity of man, and the utter inadequacy of the 

 orthodox chronology based by theologians upon our sacred books. 

 The period of man's past life upon our planet, which has been 

 fixed by the universal Church, " always, everywhere, and by all," 

 is thus perfectly proved to be merely trivial compared with those 

 vast geological epochs during which man is now known to have 

 existed.* 



-♦♦♦- 



GREENLAND AND THE GREENL ANDERS. \ 



By ELISEE EECLUS. 



TILL recently Hooker, Payer, and others supposed that the 

 interior of Greenland presented vast spaces free of ice, grassy 

 valleys where herds of reindeer grazed, and popular legends were 

 appealed to in support of this view. Nordenskjold also sug- 

 gested that the phenomenon might be explained by the action of 

 the winds, which after crossing the inland ranges descended in 

 warm currents like the fohn of Switzerland, and thus melted the 

 snows of the valleys. But the systematic researches made in re- 

 cent years have failed to discover any of these inland oases. The 

 whole land appears, on the contrary, to be covered with a continu- 

 ous ice-cap fringed by glaciers which move down the outer valleys 

 to the neighborhood of the sea, or to the fiords of the periphery. 

 The valleys themselves have disappeared, and, despite local irregu- 



* As to the evidence of man in the Tertiary period, see works already cited, especially 

 Quatrefages, Cartailhac, and Mortillet. For a summary, see Laing, as above, pp. 103-105. 

 See also, for a summing up of the evidence in favor of man in the Tertiary period, Quatre- 

 fages, Ilistoire General des Races humaines, in the Bibliotheque Etymologique, Paris, 1887, 

 chap. iv. As to the earlier view, see Vogt, Lectures on Man, London, 1864, lecture xi. 

 For a thorough and convincing refutation of Sir J. W. Dawson's attempt to make the 

 old and new Stone periods coincide, see H. W. Haynes, in chap, vi of the History of 

 America, edited by Justin Winsor. For development of various important points in the 

 relation of anthropology to the human occupancy of our planet, see Topinard, Anthropol- 

 ogy, London, 1890, chap. ix. 



f From advance sheets of North America, by Elisee Reclus, soon to be published by 

 D. Appleton k Co., being the fifteenth volume of The Earth and its Inhabitants. 



