TIME. 329 



Rhinoceros tichorhinm, may possibly be due to the same in- 

 fluences ; but the retreat of the reindeer and the musk ox are 

 probably in great measure owing to the change of climate. 

 These and similar facts, though they afford us no means of 

 measurement, impress us with a vague and overpowering 

 sense of antiquity. All geologists, indeed, are now prepared 

 to admit that man has existed on our earth for a much longer 

 period than was until recently supposed to have been the 

 case. 



But it may be doubted whether even geologists yet realise 

 the great antiquity of our race. 



"When speculations on the long series of events which 

 occurred in the glacial and post-glacial periods are indulged 

 in," says Sir C. Lyell,* " the imagination is apt to take alarm 

 at the immensity of the time required to interpret the monu- 

 -ments of these ages, all referable to the era of existing species. 

 In. order to abridge the number of centuries which would 

 otheiwise be indispensable,, a disposition is shown by many 

 to magnify the rate of change in pre-historic times,, by in- 

 vesting the causes which have modified the animate and the 

 inanimate world with extraordinary and excessive energy. 

 .... 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 modern period, shrink 

 naturally at first from making what seems so lavish an ex- 

 penditure of past time." 



Turning now to the Ethnology of the drift period, we 

 have only two skulls which can be referred with any degree 

 of probability to the age of the extinct mammalia. One of 

 them was found by Dr. Schmerling in the Cave of Engis, 

 near Liege,, the other by Dr. Fuhlrott,, also in a cave, in the 

 Neanderthal, near Dusseldorf. 



* Address to the Brit. Ass. 1864, p. 21. Bath. 



