480 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



It is thus that author opeus out a new brauch of science — " Archeo-geology" 

 for the investigations of the historian, the antiquary, and the geologist. 



" Since," continues the ^^-riter of the preface before quoted, " the way is 

 open, let us follow the author ; the first who do so will find ample reward. 

 Soon it wiE not be a single gallery that will sufiice to contain the relics of the 

 past : it is an entke museum under the porticos of which should figure also 

 the tools, the dohnans, the raised stones, antique evidences, if not of the 

 aptitude, at least of the power, of man ; for the erection of these monoliths 

 without the aid of machines is still a problem. But, hasten we on : that 

 which age and barbarism have spared disappears before civiKzation. Broken by 

 the hammer or cut by the saw, these oldest of our monuments have already, at 

 more ttian one point, served to pave the road, or to form the abutment of a 

 bridge. If governmental protection does not take them under its safe-guard 

 they will all perish. . . . No ! these stones great and small, arms, 

 utensils, idols, symbols, or characters, are not to be disdained : a whole suite 

 of revelations is there. Not solely those which prove the existence of a people, 

 but those which shew its whole life, for they indicate not simply their domestic 

 habits, theii' means of living or of satisfying the necessities of the moment, 

 . . they prove that there was in them a sentmient of futurity, a belief, 

 a faith, a religious want, an adoration, lastly that they had a perception of the 

 divinity. Yes ! upon the first men who united their efforts to dress this stone, 

 who worked off the angles to make the form regular ... a ray of 

 light from on high had descended ; they had drawn near to heaven ; it was a 

 first homage which they rendered to God. Let us render it like them, and 

 break not His altar." 



There is certainly something very beautiful in these speculations ; and no- 

 thing will link our minds so closely to the study of the changing phases of the 

 earth's antique history as thus associating the primitive tribes of our race 

 with the events of a vastly remote geologic age. M. Boucher de Perthes' 

 book is however liighly speculative throughout ; and we would have our readers 

 bear in mind that we are at present only attempting to detail, as concisely and 

 as accurately as we can, the ideas he has put before the world. Undoubtedly 

 these speculations were in the first instance, and stiU are, a great barrier to 

 the acceptance of his book ; for in many instance we ourselves cannot but re- 

 gard them as visionary. In saying this, however, we wish not to detract from 

 the real merits of his labours, for we willingly admit that in some of the wildest 

 of his notions, there lies latent a germ of truth, valuable alike to the antiquary 

 and to the geologist. 



It is somehow a character of the Erench light style of writing that they teU 

 you a great deal about themselves, at the same time that they are telling their 

 story and describmg what they have seen. The reward of the geologist, as 

 M. Boucher de Perthes in his first chapter aptly remarks, is immediate and 

 positive. He sees at once in the simple section the superposition of the beds, 

 tlieir identical or their different character. The same with the archaeologist. It 

 is not difiicult in the soil wliich he opens to perceive the fibula, the statue, or 

 the coin; the broken fragments of a vase, a brick, or tHe inspire him ^dth con- 

 fidence, and the hope of finding better, and hope doubles the zeal of even 

 the mere workman who always believes in finding a hoard of gold. " It is not 

 thus in the diluvium. There everything is sand, flints, blocks of stone, and 

 far and far between, some gigantic tootli, some enormous fragment of the head 

 or fenuir of an elephant, or a rhinoceros, which, after having evoked the 

 curiosity of 1 he worker leaves him but regret: scarcely is the debris of the 

 giant of fcn-nicr ages divested of its matrix and exposed ito the air than one sees 

 it cnMuble away and rt^solve itself into dust. What remains then for the 

 inquirer ! A souvenir, an indication : stiU it is not this for which he searches. 



