284 MAN'S PLACE IN THE GEOLOGICAL KECORD. 



and by river-side. And it is generally in such situations 

 that their flint implements are found associated with the 

 bones and tusks and horns of these extinct mammalia. 

 But these implements (like those of Abbeville, &c.) are 

 often found at great depths, and at "altittdes above the 

 levels of existing rivers, that prove the occurrence of great 

 physical changes in these regions; and this, taken in con- 

 junction with the extinction of the mammalia and the evi- 

 dent amelioration in climate, bespeaks a vast antiquity 

 compared with the shell-mounds and pile-dwellings of 

 the preceding races. A vast antiquity ! but whether ten, 

 twelve, or twenty thousand years, we have in the mean 

 time no mode of precisely determining. 



Physical changes proceed at rates too uncertain to con- 

 *stitute a scale of chronology, and we know too little of the 

 law of vital development to found upon the duration and 

 extinction of species. But if we may judge from existing 

 operations, and if we may estimate from the specific changes 

 in life now going on around us (and this with all the inter- 

 fering influences imposed by man), then the time must be 

 vast indeed since these primitive races were the inhabitants 

 of Southern and Western Europe. We do not contend, 

 like some, for thousands of centuries ; but we argue for 

 triple or quadruple the amount that has hitherto been as- 

 signed to human chronology. Let us look fairly at the 

 facts: the river -drifts, cave -earths, and lake -silts are, no 

 doubt, very ancient, but there is nothing connected there- 

 with that may not (computing by existing operations) have 

 been accomplished in ten or twelve thousand years. Again, 

 the mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, cave-lion, cave-bear, and 

 cave-hysena, are but species of existing genera ; and so little 

 do they vary in general character from those still living, 

 that their appearance at the present day would excite no 

 marvel. The whole aspects and surroundings of these ex- 



