85 
the elevation of mountain-chains would thus appear to be 
related and simultaneous events, the epoch of which might be 
taken to be the end of the quaternary period, or that which 
Lyell calls Pleistocene. 
In recent discussions respecting the “ Antiquity of Man,” 
much stress has been laid on a supposed “ Glacial Period/’ the 
existence of which has been inferred mainly from the evidences 
ot ancient glacier action and moraines which have been dis- 
covered in various districts of islands and continents. These 
phenomena give plain proof that the action of the glaciers 
must have gone on through long ages ; and if the whole period 
through which it lasted was subsequent to the first existence of 
man on the earth, his antiquity will extend backwards to an 
extremely remote epoch. But as to this question, the theory I 
am expounding gives the following very different answer. 
By considering the character of the forces to which the 
theory ascribes the disturbance of the earth's envelope, it will 
be seen that the action is as much downwards as upwards ; and 
lienee we may perceive a reason why, simultaneously with any 
elevation ol large masses, as mountain-chains, there must be 
corresponding depressions, and probably such that the quantity 
ol matter above the ocean-level would not be greatly altered 
by the disturbance. The fact might, therefore, be, that those 
localities which give evidence of the prior existence of glaciers 
and moraines (as, for instance, districts of North Wales) were 
formerly much elevated above their present mean level, and at 
that time, as the Alps do now, generated glaciers and moraines. 
The process might have gone on for ages, till, by the cata- 
strophe of the -Deluge and the accompanying convulsions, the 
glaciers were brought to a lower level, and were thus caused to 
disappear, after which there would only remain the evidences 
of their existence, which are visible at the present day. 
Lyell, in his Students’ Elements of Geology, p. 159, makes 
the following statement : — “ In Europe several quadrupeds of 
living, as well as extinct species, were common to pre-glacial and 
post-glacial times. In like manner there is reason to suppose 
that in North America much of the ancient mammalian fauna, 
together with nearly all the invertebrata, lived through the 
ages of intense cold.” These assertions, which are hardly 
reconcilable with the views entertained by the advocates of 
long-period geological chronology respecting the duration and 
effects of the glacial period, are quite consistent with the fore- 
going inferences from the present theory, which do not allow 
of a glacial period which could have any influence on the ex- 
tinction of species of animals. The evidence for such a period 
