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appeal’ to have been transported from their original localities 
by the agency of currents of water. Respecting the difference 
in the character of the implements, there will be occasion to 
make some remarks subsequently ; but as to the other mark of 
distinction between the palaeolithic and neolithic ages, it may, 
I think, be safely assumed that the transition from the one to 
the other was signalized by a sudden cataclysm brought on by 
some violent interruption of the ordinary terrestrial conditions. 
When this happened we cannot gather, with any approach to 
certainty, from geological data ; and if we might suppose the 
cataclysm to be ideutical with the Deluge of Scripture, the 
exact date would still be uncertain, because chronologies derived 
from the two authenticated forms of Scripture, the Hebrew and 
the Septuagint, differ as to the date of the Flood by eight 
centuries. If we take the earliest date assigned by Biblical 
chronologists, we cannot infer from geology that the interval 
between the supposed cataclysm and the limit of profane history 
is unduly lengthened; nor, if we take the latest date, that the 
interval is unduly shortened. It is, however, probable, when 
account is taken of the circumstance that the tradition of a 
deluge was handed down to historic times among the ancient 
Greeks, and generally in the East, that neither date would be 
very far wrong. On these grounds I make the hypothesis that 
the separation of the neolithic age from the palaeolithic, as 
indicated by geological phenomena, was caused by a cataclysm 
identical with the Deluge of Scripture, and shall next proceed 
to substantiate this view by arguments. 
One of the first lessons in geology that I learnt by attending 
the lectures of the late Professor Sedgwick was, that parts of 
the Jura chain of mountains were capped by tertiary strata, 
and that, consequently, they were raised up subsequently to the 
deposition of those strata; how much later it is not possible to 
say. These mountains flank the Alps, with a deep intervening 
valley, and might apparently have been pushed aside by the 
elevation of the Alpine range at a still later date. In short 
there is reason, from geological facts, to conclude that the 
elevation of mountain-ranges generally is to be regarded as 
the most recent of large geological changes. The following 
extract from a Lecture by Professor Owen on extinct animals, 
published in the Standard of August 3, 1874, is adduced in 
confirmation of this assertion. 
“In the north of India, during the progress of the Jumna 
canal works, sandstone was. being blasted in the foot hills of the 
Himalaya mountains at a point 1,000 feet above the present 
Indian Ocean. A fossil elephant was dug out. Every bit of 
