201 



should recede into chaotic gloom, many millenniums beyond the genesis 

 of Mosaical chronology. 



Again — Applying the observed numerical statistics of succession 

 and increase to the antiquity of man, the solution will be found to con- 

 firm the Mosaical period of 6000 years since the creation of Adam. 

 Exceed that period by even a small proportion of the hundreds of mil- 

 lenniums assigned by some to the past duration of our race, and then, 

 making amplest allowances for all the checks to fecundity, inevitable, 

 or fortuitous — war, famine, pestilence, death by physical accident, or 

 by natural decay, and all the other ills entailed by sin and violence — 

 nevertheless, man must have multiplied up to this date to such an 

 extent as to render collective existence impossible within his present 

 circumscribed domain, except the cumulative pressure of population 

 was stemmed by a universal cannibalism, or a wholesale exodus at 

 stated periods to some other planet was found practicable. To such 

 monstrous and absurd conclusions are those driven, who reject the evi- 

 dence of revelation, history, and experience, for the wild inventions of 

 an unchastened imagination. 



The frequent occurrence of stone implements, unassociated with 

 organic human remains, is obviously accounted for by their superior 

 specific gravity to the soils on which they were originally deposited, 

 and consequently their gradual yet persistent descent to the glacial or 

 fluviatile drifts ; while the lighter organic remains mingled in decay 

 with the superficial mould. Aqueous infiltration, cuspidal form of the 

 descending fragments, pressure of superinduced material, and the reci- 

 procal effects of weight and adhesiveness, would all modify the rate of 

 subsidence according to the comparative conditions in each instance ; 

 but down they go as surely as lead sinks in water ; while the flying 

 dust above, and that curious vegetable chemistry which abstracts carbon 

 from the atmosphere, gradually increase the depth by continuous incre- 

 ments of surface covering. Had the late distinguished Chevalier 

 Bunsen given due consideration to this simple fact, when he exhumed 

 a few potsherds from the riparian silts of the Nile, it would have saved 

 him the unprofitable toil of elaborating a chronology rivalling in extra- 

 vagance the Egyptian myth of the pre-Adamite kings. 



Again, where stone implements are found commingled with bones 

 of animals, that had been subsequently delocalized by migration induced 

 from climatic change — or of those extinct gigantic Pachyderms, of 

 which the sole surviving link is the Auroch of the marshy forests of 

 Lithuania* and the Caucasus — the state of organic preservation even of 



* It is impossible from the delineations of Ptolemy and other early geographers to 

 define with any approach to accuracy the topography and extent of ancient regions and 

 populations ; and we shall probably find in Caesar more reliable information respecting 

 northern Europe than in any previous writer. From him we learn that the Hercynia 

 Silva, a mingled wilderness of forest, mountain, and marsh, extending for sixty 

 days' journey from the Upper Danube towards the Baltic, was then unexplored ; and 



