58 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



may have been gradual, and the creatures which disappeared may 

 he supposed to have lived on in their modified descendants. But 

 in our own Quaternary period multitudes of the vanishing beasts 

 seem to have been destroyed by some great destruction, many of 

 them leaving no descendants whatever to represent their antique 

 and abandoned forms. Nature has simply obliterated them alto- 

 gether. All these circumstances, and many more, combine to 

 make this present geological period in which we are still living 

 the Quaternary period one of the darkest and most mysterious 

 of all. Thus every possible question which is the most difficult 

 in geology seems crowded and aggregated into the age which 

 stands nearest to us, and to which geologically we ourselves 

 belong. 



If, then, there is any one of the halls of science into which we 

 should enter with uncovered heads, it is surely that in which the 

 grand problems of Quaternary geology are handled and discussed. 

 If in her great temple there be any pavement on which a true and 

 wise agnosticism would tread with cautious and humble steps, it 

 is upon that which constitutes the threshold of inquiries so com- 

 plicated as to facts, so difficult as regards the interpretation of 

 them, and so profound in their bearing upon other subjects of the 

 very highest interest and importance. Yet this is the threshold 

 across which Prof. Huxley comes tripping on the light fantastic 

 toe. It would be hard to say whether his utterances are most con- 

 spicuous for their dogmatism or for their levity. All agnosticism 

 is forgotten, and all sense of ignorance is denied or silenced. After 

 pouring out the vials of his wrath and expending the arrows of 

 his ridicule on a conception of the Deluge which nobody enter- 

 tains, he turns fiercely on a German author who has ventured to 

 suggest that some catastrophe greater than any mere floods of the 

 Euphrates and of the Tigris may possibly have happened among 

 the many and obscure changes recorded in Quaternary geology. 

 Prof. Huxley seems very anxious to get this idea out of his way. 

 He won't hear of it. He knows all about it, at least for the pur- 

 poses of denial. He does not argue the question. He does not 

 give any reasons. He simply denies the possibility as of his own 

 authority, and pronounces it to be " particularly absurd." This 

 attempt to settle by an ipse dixit what can and what can not pos- 

 sibly have happened during the great physical changes of the 

 Quaternary age, will never do. Even if it were only on account 

 of our utter ignorance of all details respecting those changes, that 

 ignorance is notorious enough to condemn such an attempt as an 

 offense against all the legitimate methods of science. 



But there is worse than this in the sentences which follow. 

 Prof. Huxley declares contemptuously that the occurrence of any 

 catastrophe during the Quaternary age, such as could give rise to 



