CHAPTER XII. 



GEOLOGY: THE GLACIAL EPOCH, AND THE ANTIQUITY 

 OF MAN. 



The hills are shadows, and they flow 

 From form to form, and nothing stands ; 

 They melt like mist, the solid lands, 



Like clouds they shape themselves and go. 



Tennyson. 



With cunning hand he shapes the flint, 

 He carves the bone with strange device, 



He splits the rebel rock by dint 

 Of effort till one day there flies 



A spark of fire from out the stone, 



Fire, which shall make the world his own. 



Mathilde Blind. 



THE foundations of modern geology were laid, in the 

 latter part of the last century, by Werner, Hutton, and 

 William Smith, but most of the details and some of the 

 more important principles have been wholly worked out 

 during the present century. The great landmarks of its 

 progress can alone be referred to here, namely (1) the 

 establishment by Lyell of what has been termed the uni- 

 formitarian theory; (2) the proof of a recent glacial 

 epoch and the working out of its effects upon the earth's 

 surface; and (3) the discovery that man in the northern 

 hemisphere lived contemporaneously with many now ex- 

 tinct animals. 



In the early part of the century, and so late as the year 

 1830, Cuvier's " Essay on the Theory of the Earth " 



no 



