114 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 



willing to yield the point on mature reflection ?" I doubt also 

 whether some sfeolceists he names would hold the prominent 

 position in which he so injudiciously places them. 



The leading- Palaeontologists of the States, their patient 

 investigation and its wonderful results were welcomed with the 

 approbation of their separated brothers throughout the civil- 

 ized world. The Copes, Marshes, Newberrys and others have 

 departed perhaps to scenes of higher research, but the lesson 

 they bequeathed to us is to search in the Rocks themselves 

 and the remains therein entombed the ages of a Book inscrib- 

 ed in a permanent form by the hand of the Great Creator 

 Himself. It may be more satisfactory than wasting one's 

 time in a fruitless search for an Earthly Paradise, which merely 

 existed in Akkadian fable. There are some seven or eight 

 different accounts of the Creation. The Inscribed Tablets from 

 the Temple of Nero, for instance (discovered by Professor 

 Smith) are supposed to have been written in uniform language 

 2500 B.C. From two of these Chaldean accounts, consider- 

 ably altered (to suit the views of the Jewish people) we have 

 "the story of the Creation," recorded in Genesis. A good 

 many of the clergy of to-day discredit it. Herroz alleges the 

 Legend of Eden has no historical character, and Lichtenberg 

 states : "The Avhole story in Genesis" is a Philosophic Myth ; 

 and we know the views entertained of such matters bv the 

 great preachers of the Church of England, the Stanleys, Maur- 

 ices and Farrers. The writer already mentioned that Dr. A. 

 Russell Wallace has expressed his opinion that Man may have 

 appeared so far back in the Tertiaries as "The Miocene." We 

 have no satisfactory proof that such was the case. In Dr. 

 Alleyne Nicholson's "Life History" you will find that the 

 mammals of the period were very numerous. Elephants 

 larger than any species still existing, but a skeleton found at 

 Malta points to one not exceeding a Newfoundland Dog in 

 height ; Anthropoid Apes equalling man in stature (Dryopith- 

 icus), and Monkeys under various forms. Horses, Tapirs, 

 Sloths, WHiales, Deer, occur. But the lacustrone deposits of 

 tlie Western L^nited States contain the most extraordinary 



