Flint Drift and Human Remains, 191 



and will probably form the subject of increasing controversy. But 

 it is only necessary to have a clear idea of the facts as they have 

 been now ascertained, to see that one conclusion at least is placed 

 beyond all question — viz., that great physical changes on the sur- 

 face of the earth, and these, in part at least, effected by the agency 

 of water, have taken place since the creation of man. 



"Whether this conclusion carries the creation of man farther 

 back than had commonly been supposed, or whether it merely 

 brings nearer to us than we had before conceived the last great 

 changes which have produced the existing surface, is the main 

 question on which debate arises. As geology gives no certain data 

 for computing positive, but only relative time, this question is 

 necessarily involved in much obscurity. But there are certain 

 limits within which, after all, the controversy is confined. It is 

 well to observe that, according to the principle on which geolo- 

 gical times and epochs are classified, the human epoch remains, 

 after these discoveries, very much where it stood before. It is true 

 that many of the large animals, with which the traces of men 

 seem to be connected, are now extinct ; but a very much larger 

 number are still living. The Molluscan Fauna, which plays so 

 important a part in ages of geologic time, is absolutely the same. 

 The general aspect of animal life is the present aspect, with the 

 exception that a certain number of species of the larger Herbivora 

 and Carnivora have become extinct. But such extinctions, local 

 in many instances, and total in some, have taken place in historic 

 times, and are in visible process of accomplishment even now. 

 Such extinctions do not constitute a new Fauna, nor, accordinofto 

 the received principle of classifying past times, do they mark a new 

 geological age. The era of man, therefore, remains, geologically 

 speaking, in the same relative place in which it stood before — the 

 very last and latest of the world. 



But the fact that human implements are found under great beds 

 of gravel and of earth formed by water, whether of rivers or of the 

 sea, at an elevation which in either case would imply changes of 

 level, such as, if general, would be enough to revolutionize the 

 whole aspect of our now habitable surface, is a fact which casts 

 new and important light on the (geologically speaking) very recent 

 date at which those changes have taken place. 



Whether the men who formed the implements were or were 



not contemporary with the living quadrupeds whose bones are 



associated with these implements, seems tome a subordinate ques- 



