ii8 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY 



or four notes, and we have no certain evidence of 

 metals or domesticated animals. We must bear in 

 mind that there may have been more civilised races 

 than those of the Cro-magnon type, and that the 

 latter evince an artistic skill which if it had any scope 

 for development may have led to great results. The 

 native metals must have been known to man from 

 the first, though they must have been rare or only 

 locally common ; and many semi-barbarous nations 

 of later times show us that it is only a short step 

 from the knowledge of native metals to the art of 

 metallurgy, in so far as it consists in treating those 

 ores that in weight and metallic lustre most resemble 

 the metals themselves. It is also deserving of notice 

 that no other hypothesis than that of antediluvian 

 civilisation can account for the fact that in the dawn 

 of postdiluvian history we find the dwellers by the 

 Euphrates and the Nile already practising so many 

 of the arts of civilised life. In connection with this 

 we may place the early dawn of literature. Without 

 insisting on the documents which the Chaldean Noah, 

 Hasisadra, is said to have hid at Sippara before the 

 Deluge, we have the known fact that in the earliest 

 dawn of postdiluvian history the art of writing was 

 known in Chaldea and in Egypt. This at once 

 testifies to antediluvian culture, and shows that the 

 means existed to record important events. 



There is, perhaps, no one of the vagaries now 

 current under the much abused name of evolution 

 more opposed to facts, whether physical or historical 



