214 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY 



modern, we find remains of man, or his works, only 

 in the latest of the four, and in the later part of this. 

 In point of fact, there is no indisputable proof of the 

 presence of man until we reach the early modern 

 period. This is, no doubt, what was to have been 

 expected on the supposition of the orderly develop- 

 ment of the chain of animal life in the long geologic 

 eons ; but it is not by any means the only hypothesis 

 that was possible when, for example, the Book of 

 Genesis was written. A more fanciful cosmologist 

 might at that time have given precedence to man, 

 and might have supposed that the other animate 

 were produced later, and for his benefit, or his injury. 

 This is the view of the sacred writer himself with 

 respect to the local group of animals intended to be 

 in immediate association with the first man. Re- 

 stricted in this way, the statement of a group of 

 animals created with man in his earliest abode is not 

 contradictory to the order in Genesis first, nor 

 scientifically improbable. We have seen that in any 

 case the deductions from geology are in harmony 

 with the earliest revelations made to the human 

 mind on the subject, and in accordance with all the 

 later facts of actual history. 



5. The absolute date of the first appearance of 

 man cannot perhaps be fixed within a few years or 

 centuries, either by human chronology or by the 

 science of the earth. It would seem, however, that 

 the Bible history, as well as such hints as we can 

 gather from the history of other nations, limits us to 



