WILLIAM M. HAMLET. 



Y. Prehistoric ages covered by the science of Geology. 

 VI. Some ninety centuries of Historic Time. 

 I do not presume to discuss those far away fascinating epochs 

 of gaseous kinetics when the earth began to condense from its 

 initial glowing vapoury vortex ; conditions that may be said to be, 



1 not yet within the range of practical crystallisation,' but, as with 

 the wand of the magician, I pass over sundry millions of years, 

 and come down to the earliest historic period — one opened up for 

 us through the brilliant discoveries of the Egyptologist, who places 

 at our disposal contemporary records unique in value. But it is 

 hardly possible to think of Egypt and Africa without digressing 

 for a moment or two on those activities that now dominate por- 

 tions of the British Empire in the Southern Hemisphere. 



That the end of so brilliant a century as the nineteenth should 

 be marred by both war and plague, seems to me to be a humiliating 

 blot upon the escutcheon of our human progress ; for a generation 

 or more peace and progress have gone hand in hand, until we 

 believed it to be almost impossible that events such as those we 

 now witness could have happened, "considering," as Carlyle says, 

 "our present advanced state of culture, and how the torch of 

 science has now been brandished and borne about with more or 

 less effect." Such events are ugly survivals, not of the fittest, 

 but of the undesirable, to be deplored by all thoughtful men, most 

 of all by the man of science who has long contemplated their 

 entire abolition from this planet. We have colonised this great 

 continent of Australia, but there yet exists among us all the 

 defects of the old regime, while the barrier of grim ignorance bars 

 the way towards that true progress begotten of enlightment, whose 

 reward is virtue and length of days. Here, so far as disease is 

 concerned, I am reminded of the words of the illustrious Pasteur, 

 " II est au pouvoir de l'homme de faire disparaitre de la surface 

 du globe les maladies parasitaires." 



The ideal and as yet unattained Utopia — the City of Health 

 depicted by Benjamin Ward Richardson — seems still very far off 

 and will remain but the dream of the enthusiast, until the lessons 



