203 



occasional displacement of indigenous Floras by introduced plants of a 

 more utilitarian character.*" Indeed, exaltation of type seems the one 

 essential condition of continuity even with nature's grandest pattern, 

 man ; for, wherever improvement is arrested or undeveloped, extinction 

 impends; and barbaric tribes either die out " without hand" in pre- 

 sence of their ascendant brethren, or the debasing characteristics are 

 effaced in course of a few generations by assimilating intermixture with 

 immigrant civilized communities. 



According to the testimony of Pentateuchal history, happily as yet 

 unshaken by " the controversies of a counterfeit science," f civilization 

 was the primitive condition of man. The metallurgy of " brass (bronze), 

 and iron," was known even within the Adamic epoch, J and conse- 

 quently must have been transmitted to post-diluvian ages by Noah and 

 his family ; for the ambitious attempt at centralization in the plain of 

 Shinar betokened cultivated acquaintance with the constructive arts ; 

 nor does there appear any warrant of disproof that the primitive fabri- 

 cators of stone, bone, and horn implements were but outcast remnants 

 of that " one people," which, under the constraint of Divine appoint- 

 ment, had "been scattered abroad upon the face of all the earth, "§ 

 whose moral degeneracy precipitated their physical deterioration, until, 

 becoming feeble and timid, they were pitilessly driven by subsequent 

 immigrations of more powerful tribes into rocky deserts and forest 

 fastnesses, without the means and appliances of civilized life. Job,|| 

 fifteen hundred years before Christ, gives a graphic description of a 

 certain Pariah race^J who had probably been ejected from their prime- 

 val seats by the warlike princes of the Ishmaelites and the fierce and 

 restless dukes of Edom ; and it is curious to observe how accurately 

 this passage in the book of Job accords with the account of the Troglo- 

 dytes a thousand years after his time by Herodotus.** 



Certainly the 730 years intervening between Babel and the Patri- 



* See an interesting account of displacement of certain indigenous plants of New 

 Zealand by intrusion of European grasses and weeds, in a letter to Dr. Hooker from an 

 accomplished naturalist, W. T. Locke Travers, F. L. S., &c, in "Natural History 

 Review 0 for October, 1864. 



f 1 Tim. iv. 16 — see original. 



X Gen. iv. 22. — The earliest notice after the Deluge of the mining and smelting of 

 metals is found in Job, xxviii. 1-11, describing, in suMime poetic language, hydraulic and 

 Other operations of mining on the grandest scale. 



§ Gen. xi. 8. |] Job. xxx. 1-11. 



If The Sukkiim (b^ip, 2 Chron. xii. 3), who swelled the invading host of Shishakj 

 is rendered in the Septuagint, rpojyoSvrai (? rpojyXodvTai), and in the Vulgate, Trog- 

 lodyte — manifestly an incorrect rendering in both versions. The Hebrew word signifies 

 "dwellers in tents, or booths" (not caves), and probably designated a warlike nomadic 

 tribe of Ishmaelite descent. The abject and feeble Pariahs would have been an incum- 

 brance, rather than an efficient auxiliary to an army numbering 12,000 chariots and 

 60,000 horsemen, besides footmen "without number." 



* * Melpomene, sect. 184. 



