382 DIFFERENCE OF OPINION. 



pebbly gravel mixed with coarse sand, in all twenty 

 feet in thickness, and a forest of old trees was standing 

 on the surface soil. This bottom is still- subject to occa 

 sional overflow in very high stages of water." 



It is this fact, then, the " recurrence of overflow in high 

 stages of water," which in my opinion gives a strong 

 ground to scepticism as to whether or not man and the 

 mastodon had been in conflict and coeval in life the one 

 with the other. If the " bottom" where these remains 

 were found is still subject to passing inundations, each 

 leaving a deposit of one sort or the other, it must have 

 been so at consecutive times, when the skeleton was 

 much nearer the surface, though still enveloped in the 

 clay in which it first became imbedded, and by the force 

 and undermining nature of the water an arrow-head 

 might have been washed beneath the heaviest portions 

 of the animal structure, and there have remained to the 

 present day. The curious information given by Dr 

 Kock is perhaps the most interesting that has yet re 

 awakened the minds of those bent on antediluvian re 

 search, and it may well give new life to a preadamite 

 doctrine, as well as to the favourite argument of those 

 religionists who pin their faith on the one great flood 

 proclaimed in Scripture. Nevertheless we must have 

 further information yet, and fossil evidence too, of the 

 existence of man in those remote periods, for while the 

 bones of the water-rat have been fossilised, I believe the 

 most perishable bone of all, known to be infinitely less 

 durable than those of the human race, and not a vestige 

 of man nor his cousin the monkey can be found simi 

 larly preserved,* why, great doubt as to the co- existence 



* It has been asserted that fossil remains of monkeys have been discovered, 

 but I doubt it. 



