xxiv REPORT — 1864. 



same elephant having inhabited Sicily in the Postpliocene and probably 

 within the Human period had previously been brought to light by Baron 

 Anca, dming his exploration of the bone-caves of Palermo. We have 

 now, therefore, evidence of man having co-existed in Europe vrith three 

 species of elephant, two of them extinct (namely, the mammoth and the 

 Elephas antiquus), and a third the same as that which still survives in 

 Africa. As to the first of these — the mammoth — I am aware that some 

 writers contend that it could not have died out many tens of thousands 

 of years before our time, because its flesh has been found preserved ia 

 ice, in Siberia, in so fresh a state as to serve as food for dogs, bears, and 

 wolves ; but this argument seems to me fallacious. Middendorf, in 1843, 

 after digging through some tliickness of frozen soil in Siberia, came down 

 upon an icy mass, in which the carcase of a mammoth was imbedded, so 

 perfect that, among other parts, the pupil of its eye was taken out, and is 

 now preserved in the Museuiu of ^Moscow. Xo one will deny that this 

 elephant had lain for several thousand years in its icy envelope ; and if it had 

 been left undisturbed, and the cold had gone on increasing, for myriads of 

 centuries, we might reasonably expect that the frozen flesh might contiuue 

 undecayed until a second glacial period had passed away. 



When speciilations on the long series of events which occurred in the glacial 

 and postglacial periods are indulged iu, the imagination is apt to take alarm 

 at the immensity of the time required to interpret the monuments of these 

 ages, all referable to the era of existing species. In order to abridge the 

 number of centuries which would otherwise be indispensable, a disposition 

 is shown by many to magnify the rate of change in prehistoric times, by 

 investing the causes which have modified the animate and inanimate world 

 witli extraordinary and excessive energy. It is related of a great Irish orator 

 of our day, that when he was about to contribute somewhat parsimoniously 

 towards a public charity, he was persuaded by a friend to make a more liberal 

 donation. In doing so he apologized for his first apparent want of generosity, 

 by saying that his early hfe had been a constant struggle ivith scanty means, 

 and that " they who are born to afiluence cannot easily imagine how long a 

 time it takes to get the chill of poverty out of one's bones." In like manner, 

 we of the living generation, when called upon to make grants of thousands of 

 centuries in order to explain the events of what is called the modem 

 period, shrink natui-ally at fii'st from making what seems so lavish an 

 expenditure of past time. Throughout our early education we have been 

 accustomed to such strict economy in all that relates to the chronology of the 

 earth and its inhabitants in remote ages, so fettered have we been by old 

 traditional beliefs, that even when our reason is convinced, and we are per- 

 suaded that we ought to make more liberal grants of time to the geologist, we 

 feel how hard it is to get the chill of poverty out of our bones. 



I wiU now briefly allude, in conclusion, to two points on which a gradual 

 change of opinion has been taking place among geologists of late years. First, 

 as to whether there has been a continuous succession of events in the organic 

 and inorganic worlds, uninterrupted by violent and general catastrophes ; and 

 secondly, whether clear e\-idence can be obtained of a period antecedent to the 

 creation of organic beings on the earth. I am old enough to remember when 

 geologists dogmatized on both these questions in a manner very different from 

 that in which they would now venture to indulge. I beUeve that by far the 

 greater number now inchne to opposite views from those which were once 

 most commonly entertained. On the first point it is worthy of remark that 

 although a belief in sudden and general convulsions has been losing ground, 



