CHAPTER VII. 



ALONE ON THE HILLS. AFTER-DINNER SCIENCE. ON 



ARISTOCRATIC DESCENT AND NOT FROM ADAM 



AS PROPOUNDED BY 



The modern sage 

 Who, by geology surmising 

 How much man's wisdom needs revising, 

 Dethrones at once his lore and pride 

 With fossil bones, and what beside, 

 By grubbing far in womb of time, 

 When monster lizards lived in slime 

 With mud Silurian quickly poses 

 Those who believe the Books of Moses ; 

 Then, by development of races, 

 From newts a Newton clearly traces ; 

 Proves Eden's garden all a myth, 

 Unfit for, and not suited with, 

 Amphibious parents who were nursed 

 In mud, as other things at first 

 And clearly, therefore, like the rest, 

 Were toads or tadpoles at the best : 

 But after a few million ages 

 Their progeny, by lengthen'd stages, 

 Gain'd limbs and wits more nearly human, 

 Articulation and ACUMEN, 



