79 
long before geology was dreamt of), was held to lie between 
tlie first verse of Genesis — a In the beginning God created 
the heavens and tbe earth,” and the second verse, “ And the 
earth, was without form and void, and darkness was upon the 
face of the deep,” — the six days of the Mosaic creation having 
only reference to man’s appearance on the earth, together with 
the existing fauna of animate life. Has this successive crea- 
tion theory been founded on insufficient data — on hasty 
generalization combined with too little acquaintance with the 
fossiliferous remains of the earth's strata, and the creatures at 
present inhabiting the globe ? Sir Charles Lyell answers this 
question in the affirmative in his recent editions of the 
Elements of Geology. I know of no instance in which this 
theory has tended to the progress of geological knowledge. 
Sir Charles Lyell admits that it has had a retarding effect. 
During the whole time this theory has been fashionable, facts 
have been burked and pooh-poohed. No geologist of emi- 
nence, no scientific man of known reputation, held any other, 
was the answer to every heretic who adduced any awkward 
facts in contradiction. Take, for instance, the association of 
man with the extinct gigantic mammalia. 
48 The stories,” remarks Sir Charles Lyell (Antiquity of Man , p. 34), 
“ widely circulated of the bones of the mastodon having been observed with 
their surfaces pierced as if by arrow-heads, or bearing marks of wounds, 
inflicted by some stone implement, must in future be more carefully inquired 
into, for we can scarcely doubt that the mastodon in North America lived 
down to a period when the mammoth co-existed with man in Europe.” 
Antiquity of Man, p. 95 : — “ A correct account of the associated flint tools, 
and of their position, was given in 1847 by M. Boucher de Perthes in his 
work above cited, and they were stated to occur at various depths, often 
twenty or thirty feet from the surface, in sand and gravel, especially in those 
strata which were nearly in contact with the subjacent white chalk. But the 
scientific world had no faith in the statement that works of art, however • 
rude, had been met with in beds of such antiquity.” Antiquity of Man, 
p. 104 : — “ After a lively discussion on the subject in England and France, 
it was remembered not only that there were numerous recorded cases leading 
to similar conclusions in regard to cavern deposits, but also that Mr. Frere 
had, so long ago as 1797, found flint weapons of the same type as those of 
Amiens in a fresh-water formation in Suffolk, in conjunction with elephant 
remains, and nearly a hundred years earlier (1715) another tool of the same 
kind had been exhumed from the gravel of London, together with the bones 
of an elephant.” 
Speaking of tbe human bone accompanying bones of the 
