23 
necessities of the genealogies and migrations after the Flood 
recorded in Genesis, appear to require a far longer time than 
the annalists assign. Any extension conceded by the chrono- 
logists -would be absorbed by the geologists, as their data allow 
of great extension, though not requiring it. Among the 
changes involved during the period which includes the epoch of 
disturbance, is that of the severance of the Isle of Wight from 
the mainland, which must have been subsequent to the blotting- 
out of the great river, preceding the Thames, Seine, Somme, 
and Rhone in a vast delta, on the banks of which the imple- 
ments at Bournemouth were found. Mr. Fox, quoted with 
approval by Mr. Evans, says : * — “The severance of this island 
from the mainland, it appears to me, effected under very 
unusual circumstances, and at no very distant period, the 
present channel of the Solent being pretty nearly equally deep 
and equally broad throughout its entire length of fourteen 
miles, proves at once that it was not formed in the usual way 
of island-severing channels, — i.e., by gradual encroachments of 
the sea,— but by its being originally the trunk or outlet of a 
very considerable river.-’-’ f In further indicating the progress 
of the changes that took place here at the close of the mammoth 
period, Mr. Evans says : — “ Directly this closer communication 
with the sea formed for the Dorsetshire rivers, they would of 
course, owing to the now rapid fall, excavate their valleys with 
greater speed at their mouths, and directly they became tidal 
the sea would make rapid inroads on the soft sand and clay 
exposed to their action.” J Thus quickly would the change 
be made which has finally resulted in the present configuration 
and contour. 
Chronologists are agreed that about 2,000 years before Christ, 
Abraham migrated from Mesopotamia to Canaan, and that at 
this time, Egypt, at least, was old in civilization. § Beyond this 
we have no positive scale of time in Scripture ; for it is evident, 
from the narrative itself, that the latter does not cover the 
whole of time. 
Usher estimates from Scripture, the creation of man as about 
2,000 years before this. During the latter portion of this 
time, civilization was proceeding under settled governments 
in the East, interrupted, says the record and tradition, by a 
flood. 
* Dawson, Earth and Man , p. 605. 
t lb., p. 605. + lb., p. 610. 
§ “ This is the boundary, in looking backwards, of Time — absolute ; all 
beyond is time — relative.” — Duke of Argyll, Man Primeval, p. 84. 
