327 
and having regard to some forms, fixed as the oyster on the 
solid rock, immovable, lest in these changes they should 
be all destroyed, provided that their young should freely 
swim till they had found a station suitable for them, then 
plant themselves for life ; so also do the seeds of plants. And 
thus we have learned to look upon the fact that there had 
been great changes in the forms of life between two periods, 
as proving also a great lapse of time, seeing that all the indi- 
cations we can trace show that these things were gradual. 
In the same beds with man’s remains are creatures now 
extinct : the mammoth, for example, and others too, more 
numerous, now only found much further north or south, which 
once lived there, but migrated. It is not sufficient explanation 
to remark how such large animals, as being fierce wild beasts 
or good for food, are often now killed oft' or driven out by 
man. For with them in this case are some small shells, one 
( Oorbicula fluminalis ) now found no nearer than the Nile ; the 
other ( TJnio littoralis ) , gone as far as the rivers of France; but 
they once lived with the extinct mammalia and with man in 
Britain. It seems more likely that we have but the continued 
working of the laws which from the earliest geologic ages 
have determined the range in time of genera and species, and 
as all through the early epochs of the world the greater changes 
in the life were carried out in very long periods as deduced 
from independent reasoning, so it appears that in these later 
ages during the time required for the formation of the valleys 
and their terraces a corresponding change was brought about 
in the great groups of life that dwelt with man in north and 
western Europe, and this fact much strengthens our belief in 
the vast time which has elapsed since his appearance there. 
Such, then, it seems to me is a fair statement of the present 
state of the evidence for the antiquity of man. First, it has 
completely broken down in all cases where it has been at- 
tempted to assign him to a period more remote than the post- 
glacial river gravels, and there is much reason for thinking 
that should evidence be hei*eafter forthcoming on which he 
may be relegated to a more remote antiquity, it will not be 
found in northern Europe. And next, although we cannot 
offer any numerical estimate of the antiquity of the human 
remains found in the river gravels, still, having regard to the 
geographical and paleontological changes which have taken 
place since the period when those gravels were deposited, as 
compared with the changes which have taken place during the 
eighteen centuries which in our country we may call historic, 
it would appear that the age of man must be a very large 
multiple of the historic times. 
