208 



cold, and terror, must even within the lapse of three or four genera- 

 tions become almost hopelessly deteriorated both intellectually and phy- 

 sically, losing, together with the intenser vitality of soul, all memory 

 of the history, arts, and social condition of their progenitors — no desire, 

 save the satisfaction of instant animal wants — no audit of time beyond 

 the changing season, or the passing day ; for time must be a pure negation 

 to those who are incapable of applying thereto the measure of ideas 

 and incidents in intellectual progression. — Alike unheeded as unchro- 

 nicled by their oppressors, thus existed and passed away, thus now sur- 

 vive, yet decaying before our eyes, the degenerated tribes of the 

 human species.* 



It is submitted that, conceding their due value and significance to 

 the discoveries of geologists and archaeologists, the phenomena adduced 

 up to this date do not afford adequate evidence in demonstration of the 

 universality of the (so-termed) Stone era, or that it preceded civili- 

 zation upon our globe ; and both sacred and secular history accord with 

 human experience in authenticating, first, the Mosaical limit of 6000 

 years since the creation of man ; secondly, that civilization, not savagery, 

 was his primitive condition ; and, thirdly, his utter incapability of self- 

 renovation from moral and physical decadence, apart from extern aid 

 and instruction. 



From the days of Adam even to the ascendant enlightenment of 

 this nineteenth century of the Christian dispensation, civilization and 



probability that a thousand years before the Christian era, and therefore strictly within 

 the domain of secular history, icebergs not only stranded on the coasts of the Baltic and 

 North .Seas, but were launched even from glaciers formed in the maritime glens of Wales 

 and Scotland ; and that in the littoral regions of the British Isles, Denmark, and 

 Northern Germany, dwelt many scattered tribes, of whom we have obscure intimations in 

 the earlier semi-fabulous annals, as being clad in the skins of animals slain by their rude 

 primitive weapons, and dwelling amid ice and snow, like the Esquimaux of our age. 

 This view receives accidental confirmation from the bones of the Alca impennis (great 

 Auk) having been lately discovered in shell mounds in Caithness, which would imply 

 a sub-arctic climate in Scotland during the so-termed Stone era, when feeble communi- 

 ties of men dwelt in isolated localities along the coasts, and giant animals (now extinct) 

 roamed undisturbed through the marshy plains and forests of the interior. 



That climatic improvement may be effected to a considerable extent, indepen- 

 dently of physical revolutions, by the slow yet persistent agency of man, in felling fo- 

 rests, draining marine and lacustrine marshes, and confining rivers within their courses, 

 is exemplified (to quote but one instance) in the elevated mean temperature of the New 

 England states within the two centuries and half since the ''Mayflower" touched the 

 American shore : how much more, then, must the climate of Northern Europe have been 

 improved under similar agencies for well nigh twenty centuries ! " 



* The " Hobart Town Mercury" of 20th October, 1864, states that the only sur- 

 vivors of the Tasmanian aborigines then in existence were one man and three women; 

 *' the latter not being of such an age or appearance as to justify the expectation of any 

 future addition to their number ;" so that the whole race may now be deemed extinct 

 within the brief period of sixty years, notwithstanding humane exertions to preserve the 

 remnant. See papers on " Discoveries in Australia," in the " Dublin Quarterly Jour- 

 nal of Science," for 1861, '62, and '63. 



