308 



Proceedings of Societies. 



It is in that direction the indefatigable traveller proposes to roa^e 

 his next expedition, and let us hope that in two years more we shall 

 welcome Captain Speke returning from the mouths of the Congo. 



I know not whether to congratulate or condole with the Society 

 upon another advance in science, or whether that is to be called an 

 advance which some consider a double trespass, a breaking down of 

 the boundaries between geology and archceology, and overleaping the 

 ancient landmarks which divided natural science from sacred history. 



Certain well-known discoveries of hand-shaped weapons and 

 implements, found along with the remains of some extinct animals, 

 in undisturbed beds of a very ancient alluvial deposit both in France 

 and in England, led the antiquary, whose department is limited to 

 the human period, to seek to extend that period into what had 

 hitherto been the exclusive province of the geologist ; and the 

 geologist again, driven to admit that these flint spear-points have 

 been shaped by man's hand, and used upon (or among) the Elephas 

 primigeiiius, the Rhinoceros, and other extinct animals whose teeth 

 and bones now bear them company, has to seek for an extension of 

 the period hitherto allotted for the operations and deposits which 

 the race of man has witnessed. 



This only brought out more palpably what geologists had for 

 some time taught—had taught indeed almost as early as geology 

 took the dimensions of a science — that the globe itself was im- 

 measurably older than the age assigned for man. 



That period — the creation of man — the age of man on the globe — 

 had been early, and nearly unanimously fixed, by calculations based 

 upon the data afforded by the Mosaic books. 



Such calculations were necessarily more or less conjectural, 

 founded on interpretations of archaic forms of language, and of 

 words which might have difierent meanings. Numbers and figures 

 were to be read in varying manuscripts, often from faulty copies ; 

 and although great men like New'ton had satisfied themselves that 

 the received age of the world and its inhabitants was the true one, 

 new facts, of a science unknown to Newton, had shaken that 

 opinion, and it seemed probable that the Biblical scholar, the stu- 

 dent of sacred history, in the view of geological facts, would, in the 

 first place, abandon the position that the age of the creation, the 

 antiquity of the earth, was to be determined by the interpretation 

 of the Mosaical books ; and, secondly, that he would not shut his eyes 

 to new evidence offered upon the questions, v/hether the Mosaical 

 books intended to affirm the age of man upon the globe, and whether 

 the interpreters of those books had accurately and precisely and 

 definitely ascertained their meaning and intention in that matter. 



I should perhaps do better in using the terms of the latest 

 authority on this subject, which comes with "Oxford" on its title 

 page to vouch its orthodoxy, and with the sound sense of our friend 

 Dr Hannah to commend it to our acceptance : — * 



* Dr Hannah's Bampton Lectures. Oxon., 1863, 



