2 
facts with a mind coloured by contemplating the vast duration 
of the earth's building-up, naturally refers to cycles of ages. 
The zoologist, studying the more restricted area of the dying 
out of sundry species in time, is content with much less. The 
late Baron Bunsen, familiar with the loose guesses of compara- 
tive philology, adopted twenty thousand years as his conclusion. 
The Scripture student, with Genesis in his hand, asks only for 
six or seven thousand years. Can either of the rivals prove 
his assertions ? If we find that neither can do this to 
demonstration, but that each submits considerations worthy of 
notice, then all dogmatizing on the subject is out of place. 
This is the present condition of the question. 
The dozen years which have elapsed since Sir C. Lyell pub- 
lished his Antiquity of Man have been rich in contributions 
of facts and reasoning on the subject, but have not brought 
forward any demonstration. The interesting and careful 
researches of Prestwich,* Dupont, Belgrand, Evans, Dawkins, 
and othei’s ; and the still more numerous philosophizings on 
both sides of the Channel, and on both sides of the Atlantic, 
are favourable to a brief reconsideration of the subject. 
I hold that a decision in either way does not really touch 
revelation, and therefore is wholly apart from religion. This 
ought to enable us to treat the matter without passion. Con- 
venient hypothesis is often the bane of science. Long after 
the insufficiency of an empirical rule has been fully demon- 
strated its formulae still haunt the field and influence the 
speech. This has eminently been the case with the uniformi- 
tarian theory as applied to the formation of the present surface 
of the earth. It is admitted that this theory cannot reasonably 
account for existing gravel-beds, and yet the very men who 
have displaced it adopt its cast-off expressions. Sound often 
survives sense. 
If there is any province in which dogmatism is peculiarly in- 
appropriate, it is that which comprises our inquiries concerning 
man’s antiquity. The authorities have succeeded to the old 
geographers, who 
“ On pathless downs, 
Place elephants instead of towns.” 
The written record to which some of us appeal, docs not, 
and does not profess to, bear full testimony on this head ; the 
unwritten one is wholly made up of materials that have been 
* Nothing was accepted on this subject until Mr. Prestwich’s researches 
in 1859 gave public scientific value to the facts. 
