302 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
•duced recently, since that Period, in the fulness of his development. Dr. 
Southall avows his desire to treat of facts in discussing the question of Man’s 
age on the earth ; hut he has apparently a very limited view of many of the 
facts he refers to, and certainly uses them only as data for special pleading. 
The style of argument adopted can he thus illustrated. No human remains 
have been found in Miocene or Pliocene strata, ergo , Man never existed in 
Tertiary times ! High civilization obtained in the earliest known times of 
Egyptian and Babylonian history, ergo, there was never a purely Stone Age 
in Egypt and Chaldea ! Cain built a city, ergo , the earliest men were archi- 
tects ! Chaldeans and Egyptians appear to Dr. Southall to have come 
abruptly on the scene in a civilized condition some 6,000 or 10,000 years ago, 
ergo , Palaeolithic Man can claim no higher antiquity ; hence, too, there was 
no evolution as far as the human race is concerned ! Further, many beliefs, 
customs, and modes of worship are, or have been, common to widely separate 
nations, ergo, mankind came at once, Egyptian, Hindoo, Babylonian, the 
“ fossil man of Mentone,” the Neanderthal savage, and men of the Somme 
Valley, and not more than 10,000 years ago ! Errors have been made bv 
antiquaries and others in estimating the age of antiquities, fossil bones, marks 
■on bones, and of natural and artificial accumulations, ergo , there is no accept- 
able evidence of high antiquity for man ! 
Megalithic Monuments, Lake-dwellings, Danish Shell-mounds, Peat- 
deposits, Bone-caves, and River-gravels, are all regarded as having led both 
original and subsequent observers over treacherous grounds into fallacious 
reasonings, which our author thinks himself competent to make good ! 
Because there are comparatively recent stone-implements, pile-dwellings, 
refuse-heaps, and peat-beds, none can be credited with a high antiquity! 
Because floods can shift gravel and other debris, a grand pluvial flood must 
have followed the Glacial period and arranged the valley-gravels of Western 
Europe ! Because Assyrian kings hunted the Asiatic elephant, therefore 
the Eleplias primigenius of Northern Europe, or Siberian Mammoth, carries 
no evidence of high antiquity ! Oscillations of land and sea are allowed to 
have taken place on a grand scale ; but, as one of the evidences “ that force 
a 9 well as time is an element in geological action,” the long-exploded mistake 
about Jorullo is reproduced ; and the volcanic phenomena of Miocene and 
Pliocene times are brought in as u recent geological convulsions ” ; but how 
they fall in with our author’s notions of the history of man is not clear. 
And thus we go on reading Dr. Southall’s many notes on other people’s dis- 
coveries and writings, over many parts of the globe, and find that the evi- 
dences for man’s great antiquity are carefully eschewed, and whatever can 
be brought forward to strengthen the writer’s own opinion is industriously 
presented. When we look for a scientific treatment of such subjects as the 
alterations of level by oscillation and denudation — of successive depositions 
and removals of material — of changes in the configuration of Western 
Europe, where certain races of early man did exist — and of variations of 
climate, and consequent differences in successive faunas and floras, we have 
the results of imperfect and one-sided efforts to master the facts and opinions 
which geologists and naturalists have given to the thinking world. 
