3 
placed and disordered in a succession extremely difficult to 
unravel. The one has no chronological beginning, is obviously 
incomplete, and permits in its text a variation of 1,200 years or 
more ; the other allows of variations in chronology absolutely 
unlimited. 
By recent geological chronology, I mean the evidences as 
to succession displayed by the strata of the recent period, the 
period contemporaneous with the introduction of man into 
Europe. 
(1 .) The proposition I seek to establishes, that geology furnishes 
no proof, nor high probability, that this event took place 
longer ago than about six or seven thousand years. Neither 
from geology can we absolutely displace the affirmance of the 
short period ; nor can we from Scripture conclusively displace 
the assertion of a longer one. 
As a preliminary, I wish to dispose of the stories about men 
older than the quaternary; that is, older than the fourth of 
the great geological divisions of the past. The alleged dis- 
coveries of remains of men in pliocene (tertiary) strata, at St. 
Pres, in Yal d'Aras, and in Sweden, are entirely destitute of 
proof, and so is the announcement of Monsieur FAbbe Bour- 
geois, made to the Anthropological Congress at Paris, and 
afterwards at Brussels, of man in the miocene. Subsequent 
examination into these statements has altogether failed to sup- 
port them. 
By common consent, then, the earliest deposits in which human 
remains have been found are the gravels in the valley and table- 
lands of the Somme, and other rivers in the north of France, 
and south and east of England, and the floor-beds of caves on 
the edges of rocky valleys in Western Europe. In the Somme 
Valley the remains have been found at heights of 30 ft. below 
the present water-level, and in the caves from 30 ft. to 50 ft. 
above it. 
Considerable changes in the surface have therefore taken 
place since the deposits were laid down. Has this change of 
surface been effected by the slow action of present causes, 
excavating and filling up the valleys by turns ; or, if otherwise, 
is there any warrantable measure or order of succession, and 
therefore of time, to be deduced from them ? We of course 
exclude from our consideration the present surface-soil, and the 
immediate subsoil of the historical era. The latter includes the 
peat, and is synchronous with the ages of polished stone, and 
of metals down to the present. This latter series counts little 
over 2,000 years in Western Europe. It is far too much tainted 
with novelty to be of interest to us in the present inquiry, 
b 2 
