President's A ddress. 



321 



it may be safely asserted that during the historic period 

 none of the animals above referred to were inhabitants of 

 the southern and western portions of our continent. What- 

 ever the date of these stone implements, and their asso- 

 ciated mammoth and rhinoceros remains, they clearly belong 

 to pre-historic times ; and the question is thus narrowed to 

 the relative antiquities of certain events which occurred far 

 beyond the reach of the oldest history and the remotest 

 traditions. 



In dealing with pre-historic monuments, we may adopt 

 either the methods of the archaeologist, who founds chiefly 

 on the comparative rudeness and simplicity of the relics, or 

 those of the geologist, who looks mainly to the superposi- 

 tion of the beds in which the relics occur, or those of the 

 palaeontologist, who argues from the specific differences of 

 the flora and fauna ; or we may adopt a mixed method, and 

 reason from all that archaeology, geology, and palaeontology 

 supply. Adopting this latter plan, we reason from the lake- 

 silts, peat-mosses, and deltic deposits containing stone im- 

 plements and tree-canoes, associated with the bones of ex- 

 tinct varieties of the horse and ox, back to similar deposits 

 and cave-earths imbedding ruder implements and remains 

 of the Irish deer, reindeer, and musk-ox, and from these 

 again to deeper river gravels and brick-earths containing 

 implements still simpler in fashion, and associated with the 

 relics of mammoth and rhinoceros. Considerable changes 

 in the physical geography of Europe must have taken place 

 (as these silts and peat-growths imply) since the time of 

 the primitive horse and long-fronted ox ; still greater must 

 have taken place since the reindeer and musk-ox found a 

 suitable climate in the latitude of France and England ; 

 and greater still since the mammoth roamed in the pine 

 forests and over the plains of the same regions. Admitting 

 the changes, the question remains, How shall we estimate 

 the lapse of time required for their fulfilment ? If they are 

 changes of a physical kind, we estimate according to the 

 rate at which similar changes are taking place at the present 

 day ; if of a vital kind, by the rate at which extinctions and 

 creations seem to have been effected in former epochs ; and 



VOL. III. 2 T 



