19 
mammoth caves does not betray any marked departure in struc- 
ture, whether of skull or limb, from the modern standard of 
certain living races of the human family.* 
Again, Sir Charles says that, between the palaeolithic and 
the neolithic there is evidently “ a vast interval of time,” but 
gives no grounds for the assertion save the modern slow extinc- 
tion of the tiger in Bengal, and more sno he invalidates his own 
conclusion by saying that “it is probable that causes more 
general and powerful than the agency of man, — alterations in 
climate, variations in the range of many species of animals, 
vertebrate and invertebrate, and of plauts, geographical changes 
in the height and depth and extent of land and sea, — some or all 
of these combined, have given rise in a vast series of ages to 
the annihilation, not only of large mammalia, but to the 
disappearance of the Cyrena fluminalis, once common in the 
rivers of Europe.” f Why vast series of ages? The more 
general causes and powers thus evoked, operating for a few 
centuries, are quite equal to the task required. 
The advent of man, according to Sir Charles Lyell, belongs 
to the second continental period, when Britain was a portion of 
the Continent, and was insensibly being raised, and the ice 
retreating northwards, and with it the Arctic quadrupeds; 
whilst the mammoth and woolly rhinoceros and great hippo- 
potamus still wandered on the banks of the broad rivers. After 
this came the breaking up of the British area into its present 
island form, during which many oscillations of level occurred, 
the land became lowered, the climate ameliorated; then came 
neolithic and historic times. Sir Charles affirms that the 
first human period is an integral portion of a cycle of 224,000 
years, but wisely does not say what portion. He says that if 
it occurred at the epoch to which he has assigned it, then it is 
so remote as to cause the historical period to sink into insig- 
nificance. This is merely intimating that the changes referred 
to might have occurred without catastrophe, and, if they did, 
would have required over 100,000 years. We may just as 
forcibly say, and if they did not, they may have required 2,000 
years only. 
Mr. Boyd Dawkins is equally bold with Sir Charles Lyell, 
and his carefully-observed and detailed facts are equally at 
variance with his working theory . % After stating that the 
* Antiquity of Man, p. 419. + lb., p. 418. 
J But Mr. Dawkins elsewhere maintains that it is impossible to gauge 
time past, outside historical record. He also founds his opinion on pre- 
glacial, or inter-glacial, appearance of man on the occurrence of his companion 
the reindeer. 
c 2 
