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thousands of years ago; and I should like to ask Dr. Dawson to favour 

 us with a comparison of dates as between the period when Egypt lay 

 at a different level than now, and that when the Syrian caves were at 

 a high level. Can he say whether they were coincident ? If so the 

 Lebanon hill district has been raised up subsequently. But whether 

 this be so or not it seems to me to be a kind of discrepancy to use the 

 word " antediluvian." Geologists do not allow such a word as it is used 

 in the ordinary sense. There have doubtless been deluges — and those 

 enormous deluges ; in fact, it is shown that there was a geological period in 

 which there were so many deluges, one after another — it may be a few 

 years apart, or it may be hundreds of years — which affected all the peoples 

 in perhaps every part of the world ; and it is probable that when the 

 remnants of those peoples came together in the course of time, and had, 

 every one of them a traditional deluge to speak of, this may have been the 

 origin of the idea of a great universal deluge such as has been commonly 

 understood.* The geologist puts these diluvial times down as having 

 occurred in the post-glacial period after the great ice era, — the period when 

 one or both polar parts of the world were gradually relieved of the enor- 

 mous ice-fields which had previously existed, as the ice melted and dis- 

 appeared with deluge after deluge, the seasons becoming hotter, the effect of 

 the successive floods and movements of the land was to cut off one people from 

 another and create human isolations on a grand scale, leaving remnants of the 

 antedUuvian peoples, which became the ancestors of the different nations 

 now found in various parts of the world. It would be very interesting to 

 know how long after the post-glacial period the elevation occurred which 

 brought up the Syrian hills from the level which occupied the place where the 

 Mediterranean is now. I merely say this because it would bring the matter 

 more closely home to us to be enabled to have something like comparative 

 data of which we could speak. But something of this sort we have already, 

 for we can point to the evidences of those upheavals — some of which formed 

 the land occupying the area of the existing North Sea, when there was one 

 great continuous vaUey from the Ehine to the Norwegian area, and when the 

 land was so high that the North Sea Valley and, doubtless, the English 

 Channel were inland valleys. At that time men inhabited England — how 

 long ago we know not ; but among geologists I may mention Prestwich, 

 of Oxford, and the Eev. Osmond Fisher, of Cambridge, the former of 

 whom considered that it must have been at least ten thousand years, while 

 the latter thinks it must have been more. I hope Dr. Dawson will think 

 over these remarks, and if he can find time to offer a few words in reply 

 I should be glad if he would do so. 

 Colonel J. Hersciiel, R.E., F.R.S., F.R.A.S., having said a few words, 

 Mr. W. St. Chad Boscawen. — Although unable to speak upon this sub- 

 ject from the geologist's point of view, I may state that I have examined the 

 caves that have been described by Professor Dawson, and that I spent some 



* This subject is specially treated in Sir .J. W. Dawson's reply. 

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