378 REVIEWS—GEOLOGICAL EVIDENCES OF MAN’S ANTIQUITY, 
REVIEWS. 
The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man, with Remarks on- 
Theories of Species by Variation. By Sir Charles Lyell, F.R.S. 
London: John Murray, 1863. 
There are certain questions and debatable points of inquiry, belong- 
ing to the domain of Science, which awaken, from their very nature, 
an almost equal amount of interest on the part of the general public, . 
and on that also of the anti-scientific world—using this latter term, in 
default of a better, to designate a class, at one time numerous, though 
now reduced in parliamentary phrase, to a small but active minority, 
which regards (without actually confessing it) the revelations of Natu- 
ral Science as directly or indirectly antagonistic to the authority of 
Biblical acceptations. Amongst these questions, the date of Man’s 
origin occupies a prominent place. The usual belief fixes the creation 
of Human Life at about six thousand years before the present era ;. 
but theologians differ amongst themselves with regard to the precise 
date. The gathered records of Geology have long been tending to- 
wards another conclusion: one that attributes to our race a far higher 
or more remote antiquity ; and the principal aim of Sir Charles Ly- 
ell’s book is to present a clear and forcible exposition of this view, 
based on the results of recent discovery and research. The book, 
however, has, apparently, a two-fold aim: one to maintain the high 
antiquity of Man; and the other, to make this antiquity subservient 
to the support of the so-called Darwinian theory with regard to Man’s 
origin. Postponing, for the present, the discussion of this latter view, 
let us briefly examine the more important facts, thus brought toge- 
ther, in support of the assumed presence of Man upon the earth at a 
period incalculably remote as compared with the known points of hu- 
man history. In order to exhibit these facts to the general reader, in 
their true bearings on the question under review, it will be necessary 
to carry our retrospective glance still farther into the depths of Time, 
and to trace up the course of geological history, from the remote epochs - 
which preceded the dawn of life, to the period of Man’s advent, when 
the geology of the Past blends with and gradually merges into the ge- 
ology of the Present. 
Speculation, supported by many facts that point in the same direc-- 
tion, pictures the primary condition of the earth—equally with that of 
other cosmical bodies ——as one of nebulosity, gradually condensing to-- 
