42 THANSACTIONS OF THK CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [VoL. IV. 



but a description of the same spot by a Alohammedan writer only six 

 centuries ago shows that t)ie mud is deposited at the rate of over eigh- 

 teen inches in a hundred years."* 



An English resident in India recounts that the foundation of a house 

 he had himself built was carried away and strewed along the bottom of 

 a river at a depth of thirty or foriy feet below the level of the country. 

 " Since then the river has passed on," he says, " and a new village now 

 stands on the spot where my bungalow stood, but forty feet above the 

 ruins ; and any one who chooses to dig on the spot may find my re- 

 liqiiice there, and form what theory he likes as to their antiquity or my 

 age." t 



Again, antiquarians of a geological turn of mind should remember, it 

 seems, that in most cases the agents which now produce alluvial deposits 

 were formerly many times more powerful and that therefore strata con- 

 taining archaeological relics were formed at a proportionately greater 

 rate. Take, for instance, the valley of the Somme in France. \o region ■ 

 has probably become so famous in the Annals of Archaeology. The 

 Somme is to-day a modest river w'ith very quiet waters. Now, accord- 

 ing to M. de Mercey, who has made a careful study of its history, its 

 waters at the Roman epoch were fifty times more abundant than in our 

 days.:]: Moreover, it is a well established fact that the sea at that time 

 mu.^t have extended to Amiens, since below a marine deposit nine feet 

 thick coins have been found, the most recent of which bears the effigy of 

 a prince who died A.D. 267. § In the neighbourhood of Lille, a medal of 

 Marcus Aurelius was found at a depth of twenty-five feet under a triple 

 bed of reddish clay, muddy slime and peat mixed with sand. || 



Thus Geology refutes itself the theories of the partizans of the great 

 age of the primitive stone implements, theories which they claim to base 

 on geological grounds. Let us now see what History has to say on the 

 same subject. 



The contention of the majority of antiquarians is that the stone age 

 long antedated the historic period. In opposition to this, O. Fraas states 

 that " arrows with sharp flint heads, and especially stone axes, stone 

 chisels and stone hammers are found among the Germans, even down to 

 the time of the Franks. . . . According to Herodotus, Ethiopians 



* .Southall, Recent Origin of Man, p. 474. 



+ Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, p. 327, Aug. 1863. 



* Bulletin de la Societe Geologiqiie, 1876-77, p. 347. 

 § Christian Anthropology, p. 260, New York, 1892. 

 \^Materiatix four Vhistoire de V horn me, p. 136, 1878. 



