LECTURE XI. 331 



Assuming^ as above, the present era at 14,400 years, and 

 adding three subterraneous groups, each equal to the hving, 

 (leaving out the fourth, in which the skeleton was found), that 

 is to say 43,200, we obtain a total for the age of the skeleton 

 of 57,500 years." 



The data requisite for this computation are so simple that 

 the result can scarcely be cavilled at. 



Between 1851 and 1854, two sets of shafts and borings were 

 sunk in Egypt, the one in the latitude of Heliopolis, where the 

 valley is sixteen miles broad, the other near Memphis, where 

 the valley is but five miles broad. All the remains, such as 

 land-sheUs and bones, belonged to living species, bones of the 

 ox, hog, dog, camel, and ass, were very common. 



There were also found pieces of burnt brick and pottery, one 

 piece at a depth of sixty feet. If now it be correct that the 

 increase of Nile-mud is at the rate of five inches in a century 

 (in the Delta the rate of deposit is less, namely, 2| inches), 

 then the piece of burnt brick, found at a depth of sixty feet in 

 the Nile-mud, would be 12,000 years old, which can scarcely 

 surprise us, as the Egyptian King Menes lived about 5,000 years 

 before Christ, and before him Egypt had attained a high degree 

 of civilisation, and possessed at least two important cities, 

 Thebes and This. If 7-8,000 years ago, that is to say, at the 

 time of the biblical Adam, flourishing cities were standing, we 

 need not wonder that some thousands of years before the 

 existence of these cities, the art of brickmaking was known. 



The discoveries in the peat-bogs, specially of Denmark, 

 where, as in the Delta of the Mississippi, superimposed gene- 

 rations of forests are met with, consisting of trees, at present 

 not existing in Denmark, also testify to a high antiquity, though 

 I am not aware that any attempts have been made to compute 

 the duration of the turf-moors from the annual rings of the 

 trees. 



The great antiquity of man reaching back to the period of the 

 cave-bear, being thus established, it is as easy to prove that man, 

 the contemporary of the cave-bear, cannot have immigrated from 

 afar. The structure of his cranium presents no resemblance to 

 that of any European race, still less to any Asiatic ; for in Asia, 



