ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 



283 



valleys in England and France are believed by the best 

 observers to have been deepened at least a hundred feet ; 

 caverns now far out of the reach of any stream must for 

 a long succession of years have had streams flowing 

 through them, at least in times of floods ; and this often 

 implies that vast masses of solid rock have since been 

 worn away. In Sardinia land has risen at least 300 feet 

 since men lived there who made pottery and probably 

 used fishing-nets ;^ while in Kent's Cavern remains of 

 man are found buried beneath two separate beds of 

 stalagmite, each having a distinct texture, and each 

 covering a deposit of cave-earth having well-marked 

 differential characters, while each contains a distinct 

 assemblage of extinct animals. 



Such, briefly, are the results of the evidence that has 

 been rapidly accumulating for about fifteen years, as to 

 the antiquity of man ; and it has been confirmed by so 

 many discoveries of a like nature in all parts of the globe, 

 and especially by the comparison of the tools and weapons 

 of prehistoric man with those of modern savages (so that 

 the use of even the rudest flint implements has become 

 quite intelligible), that we can hardly wonder at the vast 

 revolution effected in public opinion. Not only is the 

 belief in man's vast and still unknown antiquity uni- 

 versal among men of science, but it is hardly disputed 

 by any well-informed theologian ; and the present gene- 

 ration of science-students must, we should thiuk, be 

 somewhat puzzled to understand what there was in the 

 earliest discoveries that should have aroused such general 

 opposition, and been met with such universal incredulity. 



But the question of the mere Antiquity of ]\Tan " 



^ Lyell's Anliquify of Mav, fourth edition, p. 115. 



