PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON THE WAR-PATH. 63 



absurd also is the denial that it may have been as wide as the 

 whole area occupied by man at some early stage of his dispersion ! 

 Further, can he tell us whether this " great submergence " over 

 more than one great area, was balanced or not by any correspond- 

 ing elevation over some other ? And if it was, then can he tell us 

 whether the elevation may not possibly have been a raising of 

 some ocean floor ? And if it was, can he assure us that the 

 " fountains of the great deep " did not perforce pour their waters 

 over corresponding areas of the land ? Can he tell us how deep 

 the great submergence was, as well as how wide ? Above all, can 

 he tell us how slow it was, or how rapid ? If he can't tell us 

 any one of these things, or make even a plausible attempt to do 

 so, then he has no right to tell the world that Quaternary geology 

 " knows nothing " of any more adequate basis for the world-wide 

 tradition of a deluge than a flood in Mesopotamia. Quaternary 

 geology is still in great confusion, the prey of extreme theorists, 

 and of many baseless hypotheses. But it is not quite in such a 

 mess as Prof. Huxley would represent it to be. For one thing, 

 it has established " the great submergence " with all its conse- 

 quences. 



But this is not all. "When once the scales of preconception and 

 of spurious authority have fallen from our eyes, they are opened 

 to other facts which have been as clearly ascertained, as timidly 

 regarded, and as feebly interpreted. In particular we see the 

 fleshly bodies, and the complete skeletons, and the collected and 

 compacted bones of millions of great animals which have per- 

 ished very lately many without leaving descendants and have 

 so perished as to be preserved in superficial deposits scattered over 

 many portions of the globe. In my own case, it was the futility 

 of the explanation given of these facts of Quaternary geology by 

 the Lyellian school that first awoke my attention, now many years 

 ago, to the untrustworthiness of the method in which these facts 

 were handled. Nothing that savored of the possibility of " catas- 

 trophes " would that school even look at fairly in the face. No 

 idea that would not fit, or could not be squeezed, into their own 

 narrow interpretations of the doctrine of uniformity, could find 

 entrance into minds swathed in the bandages of the great hurdy- 

 gurdy theory. I can not in these pages give, even in abstract, the 

 astonishing facts which Quaternary geology has established re- 

 specting the death and preservation of what are called the Plio- 

 cene and the Pleistocene mammalia and this, too, both in the 

 Old and in the New World. They have lately been collected and 

 marshaled with exhaustive research, and with admirable ability, 

 by Mr. Howorth, M. P., in his book on The Mammoth and the 

 Flood. I observe that a most significant silence has been main- 

 tained respecting this array of facts and arguments, and that the 



