LIFE ON THE EAIITH. 47 



horses, dogs, and cattle now, they seem to have been 

 as various in the earlier times, and associated then 

 as now with particular tracts of country and fami- 

 lies of mankind 1 ; nor even in regard to man do we 

 find much change in the African, Caucasian, or Mon- 

 golian races, which seem to have been from remote 

 antiquity separate, and still are distinguishable by 

 the characters assigned to them in the pages of Am- 

 mianus Marcellinus and Herodotus, and in the an- 

 cient sculptures of Egypt. 



The interval of time which has elapsed since the 

 present races of created life came into being cannot 

 be known by any kind of research practicable for 

 mankind, unless Geology can solve the problem. As 

 far as human experience goes a few thousand 

 years there appears too little change in individual 

 character, or in the combination of the whole series, 

 to furnish any data for inferences touching the epoch 

 of the ' creation.' If we are able to say these races 

 of plants and animals were not eternal, nor the ear- 

 liest of created things, but had predecessors and a 

 date of origin, it is not Zoology, nor History, nor 

 Tradition which tells us so; but Geology, which, 

 agreeing with the authority of Scripture in the late 

 date of man, and the races of beings associated with 

 him, adds its own testimony of Pre-adamitic beings. 



1 Oppian. KTNHF. i. 116. 



