Chapter XVI: Part 16

In Eastern Yorkshire, Mr. Searles V. Wood, Jun., has divided the glacial deposits into “Purple Clay without Chalk,” “Purple Clay with Chalk,” and “Chalky Clay,” the whole being later than his “Middle Glacial Sands and Gravel,” which, in East Anglia, are overlain by the “Chalky Clay,” and rest unconformably upon the “Contorted Drift” of Norfolk, the Cromer Till, and the Forest Bed. His three Yorkshire clays are, however, considered by most northern geologists to be the representatives of the “Upper Boulder Clay” west of the Pennine Chain, the “Chalky Clay” having been formed before the country had sufficiently subsided to allow the sandstones and marls, furnishing the red colouring matter, to have suffered denudation; while the “Purple Clay without Chalk, and with Shap Granite,” was deposited when all the chalk was mainly beneath the sea, and the granite from Shap Fell, which had been broken up by breaker-action during the Middle Sand era, was floated across the passes of the Pennine Chain and southwards and northwards. A solitary pebble of Shap granite has been found by Mr. De Rance at Hoylake, in Cheshire; and many of Criffel Granite, in that county, and on the coast of North Wales, by Mr. Mackintosh, who has also traced the flow of this granite in the low country lying north and south of the Cumberland mountains.

At Bridlington, in Yorkshire, occurs a deposit at the base of the “Purple Clay,” with a truly Arctic fauna. Out of seventy forms of mollusca recorded by Mr. S. V. Wood, Jun., nineteen are unknown to the Crag--of these thirteen are purely arctic, and two not known as living.

Shells have been found in the Upper Boulder Clay of Lancashire, at Hollingworth Reservoir, near Mottram, by Messrs. Binney, Bateman, and Prestwich, at an elevation of 568 feet above the sea, consisting of _Fusus Bamffius_, _Purpura lapillus_, _Turritilla terebra_, and _Cardium edule_. The clay is described by Mr. Binney as sandy, and brown-coloured, with pebbles of granite and greenstone, some rounded and some angular. All the above shells, as well as _Tellina Balthica_, have been found in the Upper Clay of Preston, Garstang, Blackpool, and Llandudno, by Mr. De Rance, who has also found all the above species (with the exception of _Fusus_), as well as _Psammobia ferroensis_, and the siliceous spiculæ of marine sponges, in the Lower Boulder Clay of West Lancashire. He has described the ordinary red Boulder Clay of Lancashire as extending continuously through Cheshire and Staffordshire into Warwickshire, gradually becoming less red and more chalky, everywhere overlying intermittent sheets of “sands and shingle-beds,” one of which is particularly well seen at Leamington and Warwick, where it contains Pectens from the Crag, _Gryphæa_ from the Lias, and chalk fossils and flints. The latter have also been found by Mr. Lucy in the neighbourhood of Mount Sorrel, associated with bits of the Coral Rag of Yorkshire. The gravels of Leicester, Market Harborough, and Lutterworth were long ago described by the Rev. W. D. Conybeare as affording “specimens of the organic remains of most of the Secondary Strata in England.”

The Rev. O. Fisher, F.G.S., has paid much attention to the superficial covering usually described as “heading,” or “drift,” as well as to the contour of the surface, in districts composed of the softer strata, and has published his views in various papers in the _Journal of the Geological Society_ and in the _Geological Magazine_. He thinks that the contour of the surface cannot be ascribed entirely to the action of rain and rivers, but that the changes in the ancient contour since produced by those changes can be easily distinguished. He finds the covering beds to consist of two members--a lower one, entirely destitute of organic remains, and generally unstratified, which has often been forcibly indented into the bed beneath it, sometimes exhibiting slickenside at the junction.

There is evidence of this lower member having been pushed or dragged over the surface, from higher to lower levels, in a plastic condition; on which account he has named it “The Trail.”

The upper member of the covering beds consists of soil derived from the lower one, by weathering. It contains, here and there, the remains of the land-shells which lived in the locality at a period antecedent to cultivation. It is “The Warp” of Mr. Trimmer.

Neither of these accumulations occur on low flats, where the surface has been modified since the recent period. They both alike pass below high-water mark, and have been noticed beneath estuarine deposits.

Mr. Fisher is of opinion that land-ice has been instrumental in forming the contour of the surface, and that the trail is the remnant of its _moraine profonde_. And he has given reasons[112] for believing that the climate of those latitudes may have been sufficiently rigorous for that result about 100,000 years ago. He attributes the formation of the superficial covering of Warp to a period of much rainfall and severe winter-frosts, after the ice-sheet had disappeared.

[112] _Geological Magazine_, vol. iii., p. 483.

The phenomena which so powerfully affected our hemisphere present themselves, in a much grander manner, in the New World. The glacier-system appears to have taken in America the same gigantic proportions which other objects assume there. Nor is it necessary, in order to explain the permanent existence of this icy mantle in temperate climates, to infer the prevalence of any very extraordinary degree of cold. On this subject M. Ch. Martins thus expresses himself: “The mean temperature of Geneva is 9° 5 Cent. Upon the surrounding mountains the limit of perpetual snow is found at 8,800 feet above the level of the sea. The great glaciers of the valley of Chamounix descend 5,000 feet below this line. Thus situated, let us suppose that the mean temperature of Geneva was lowered only 4°, and the average became 5° 5; the decrease of temperature with the height being 1° c. for every 600 feet, the limit of perpetual snow would be lowered by 2,437 feet, and would be 6,363 feet above the level of the sea. We can readily admit that the glaciers of Chamounix would descend below this new limit, to an extent at least equal to that which exists between their present limit and their lower extremity. Now, in reality, the foot of these glaciers is 5,000 feet above the ocean; with a climate 4° colder, it would be 2,437 feet lower; that is to say, at the level of the Swiss plain. Thus, the lowering of the line of perpetual snow to this extent would suffice to bring the glacier of the Arve to the environs of Geneva.... Of the climate which has favoured the prodigious development of glaciers we have a pretty correct idea; it is that of Upsala, Stockholm, Christiana, and part of North America, in the State of New York.... To diminish by four degrees the mean temperature of a country in order to explain one of the grandest revolutions of the globe, is to venture on an hypothesis not bolder than geology has sometimes permitted to itself.”[113]

[113] _Revue des Deux Mondes._

In proving that glaciers covered part of Europe during a certain period, that they extended from the North Pole to Northern Italy and the Danube, we have sufficiently established the reality of this _glacial period_, which we must consider as a curious episode, as well as certain, in the history of the earth. Such masses of ice could only have covered the earth when the temperature of the air was lowered at least some degrees below zero. But organic life is incompatible with such a temperature; and to this cause must we attribute the disappearance of certain species of animals and plants--in particular, the Rhinoceros and the Elephant--which, before this sudden and extraordinary cooling of the globe, appear to have limited themselves, in immense herds, to Northern Europe, and chiefly to Siberia, where their remains have been found in such prodigious quantities. Cuvier says, speaking of the bodies of the quadrupeds which the ice had seized, and in which they have been preserved, with their hair, flesh, and skin, up to our own times: “If they had not been frozen as soon as killed, putrefaction would have decomposed them; and, on the other hand, this eternal frost could not have previously prevailed in the place where they died; for they could not have lived in such a temperature. It was, therefore, at the same instant when these animals perished that the country they inhabited was rendered glacial. These events must have been sudden, instantaneous, and without any gradation.”[114]

[114] “Ossements fossiles. Discours sur les Révolutions du Globe.”

(Living shell.)]

How can we explain the _glacial period_? We have explained M. Adhémar’s hypothesis, to which it may be objected that the cold of the glacial period was so general throughout the Polar and temperate regions on both sides of the equator, that mere local changes in the external configuration of our planet and displacement of the centre of gravity scarcely afford adequate causes for so great a revolution in temperature. Sir Charles Lyell, speculating upon the suggestion of Ritter and the discovery of marine shells spread far and wide over the Sahara Desert by Messrs. Escher von der Linth, Desor, and Martins--which seem to prove that the African Desert has been under water at a very recent period--infers that the Desert of Sahara constituted formerly a wide marine area, stretching several hundred miles north and south, and east and west. “From this area,” he adds, “the south wind must formerly have absorbed moisture, and must have been still further cooled and saturated with aqueous vapour as it passed over the Mediterranean. When at length it reached the Alps, and, striking them, was driven into the higher and more rarefied regions of the atmosphere, it would part with its watery burthen in the form of snow; so that the same aërial current which, under the name of the Föhn, or Sirocco, now plays a leading part with its hot and dry breath, sometimes, even in the depth of winter, in melting the snow and checking the growth of glaciers, must, at the period alluded to, have been the principal feeder of Alpine snow and ice.”[115] Nevertheless, we repeat, no explanation presents itself which can be considered conclusive; and in science we should never be afraid to say, _I do not know_.

[115] Lyell’s “Elements of Geology,” p. 175.

CREATION OF MAN AND THE ASIATIC DELUGE.

It was only after the glacial period, when the earth had resumed its normal temperature, that man was created. Whence came he?

He came from whence originated the first blade of grass which grew upon the burning rocks of the Silurian seas; from whence proceeded the different races of animals which have successively replaced each other upon the globe, gradually, but unceasingly, rising in the scale of perfection. He emanated from the supreme will of the Author of the worlds which constitute the universe.

The earth has passed through many phases since the time when--in the words of the Sacred Record--“the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” We have considered all these phases; we have seen the globe floating in space in a state of gaseous nebulosity, condensing into liquidity, and beginning to solidify at the surface. We have pictured the internal agitations, the disturbances, the partial dislocations to which the earth has been subjected, almost without interruption, while it could not, as yet, resist the force of the waves of the fiery sea imprisoned within its fragile crust. We have seen this envelope acquiring solidity, and the geological cataclysms losing their intensity and frequency in proportion as this solid crust increased in thickness. We have looked on, so to speak, while the work of organic creation was proceeding. We have seen life making its appearance upon the globe; and the first plants and animals springing into existence. We have seen this organic creation multiplying, becoming more complex, and constantly made more perfect with each advance in the progressive phases of the history of the earth. We now arrive at the greatest event of this history, at the crowning of the edifice, _si parva licet componere magnis_.

At the close of the Tertiary epoch, the continents and seas assumed the respective limits which they now present. The disturbances of the ground, the fractures of the earth’s crust, and the volcanic eruptions which are the consequence of them, only occurred at rare intervals, occasioning only local and restricted disasters. The rivers and their affluents flowed between tranquil banks. Animated Nature is that of our own days. An abundant vegetation, diversified by the existence of a climate which has now been acquired, embellishes the earth. A multitude of animals inhabit the waters, the dry land, and the air. Nevertheless, creation has not yet achieved its greatest work--a being capable of comprehending these marvels and of admiring the sublime work--a soul is wanting to adore and give thanks to the Creator.

God created man.

What is man?

We might say that man is an intelligent and moral being; but this would give a very imperfect idea of his nature. Franklin says that man is one that can make tools! This is to reproduce a portion of the first proposition, while depreciating it. Aristotle calls man the “wise being,” ζωον πολιτικον. Linnæus, in his “System of Nature,” after having applied to man the epithet of wise (_homo sapiens_) writes after this generic title these profound words: _Nosce te ipsum_. The French naturalist and philosopher, Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, says, “The plant _lives_, the animal _lives and feels_, man _lives, feels, and thinks_”--a sentiment which Voltaire had already expressed. “The Eternal Maker,” says the philosopher of Ferney, “has given to man organisation, sentiment, and intelligence; to the animals sentiment, and what we call instinct; to vegetables organisation alone. His power then acts continually upon these three kingdoms.” It is probably the animal which is here depreciated. The animal on many occasions undoubtedly thinks, reasons, deliberates with itself, and acts in virtue of a decision maturely weighed; it is not then reduced to mere sensation.

To define exactly the human being, we believe that it is necessary to characterise the nature and extent of his intelligence. In certain cases the intelligence of the animal approaches nearly to that of man, but the latter is endowed with a certain faculty which belongs to him exclusively; in creating him, God has added an entirely new step in the ascending scale of animated beings. This faculty, peculiar to the human race, is _abstraction_. We will say, then, that man is an _intelligent_ being, gifted with the faculty of comprehending the _abstract_.

It is by this faculty that man is raised to a pre-eminent degree of material and moral power. By it he has subdued the earth to his empire, and by it also his mind rises to the most sublime contemplations. Thanks to this faculty, man has conceived the ideal, and realised poesy. He has conceived the infinite, and created mathematics. Such is the distinction which separates the human race so widely from the animals--which makes him a creation apart and absolutely new upon the globe. A being capable of comprehending the ideal and the infinite, of creating poetry and algebra, such is man! To invent and understand this formula--

(_a_ + _b_)² = _a_² + 2_ab_ + _b_²,

or the algebraic idea of negative quantities, this belongs to man. It is the greatest privilege of the human being to express and comprehend thoughts like the following:

J’étais seul près des flots, par une nuit d’étoiles,
Pas un nuage aux cieux, sur les mers pas de voiles,
Mes yeux plongeaient plus loin que le monde réel,
Et les vents et les mers, et toute la nature
Semblaient interroger dans un confus murmure,
Les flots des mers, les feux du ciel.

Et les étoiles d’or, légions infinies,
À voix haute, à voix basse, avec mille harmonies
Disaient, en inclinant leur couronne de feu;
Et les flots bleus, que rien ne gouverne et n’arrête:
Disaient, en recourbant l’écume de leur crête:
“C’est le Seigneur, le Seigneur Dieu!”*

VICTOR HUGO, _les Orientales_.

* * * * *

* Alone with the waves, on a starry night,
My thoughts far away in the infinite;
On the sea not a sail, not a cloud in the sky,
And the wind and the waves with sweet lullaby
Seem to question in murmurs of mystery,
The fires of heaven, the waves of the sea.

And the golden stars of the heavens rose higher,
Harmoniously blending their crowns of fire,
And the waves which no ruling hand may know,
‘Midst a thousand murmurs, now high, now low,
Sing, while curving their foaming crests to the sea,
“It is the Lord God! It is He.”

The “Mécanique Céleste” of Laplace, the “Principia” of Newton, Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” the “Orientales” by Victor Hugo--are the fruits of the _faculty of abstraction_.

In the year 1800, a being, half savage, who lived in the woods, clambered up the trees, slept upon dried leaves, and fled on the approach of men, was brought to a physician named Pinel. Some sportsmen had found him; he had no voice, and was devoid of intelligence; he was known as the little savage of Aveyron. The Parisian _savants_ for a long time disputed over this strange individual. Was it an ape?--was it a wild man?

The learned Dr. Itard has published an interesting history of the savage of Aveyron. “He would sometimes descend,” he writes, “into the garden of the deaf and dumb, and seat himself upon the edge of the fountain, preserving his balance by rocking himself to and fro; after a time his body became quite still, and his face assumed an expression of profound melancholy. He would remain thus for hours--regarding attentively the surface of the water--upon which he would, from time to time, throw blades of grass and dried leaves. At night, when the clear moonlight penetrated into the chamber he occupied, he rarely failed to rise and place himself at the window, where he would remain part of the night, erect, motionless, his neck stretched out, his eyes fixed upon the landscape lit up by the moon, lost in a sort of ecstasy of contemplation.” This being was, undoubtedly, a man. No ape ever exhibited such signs of intelligence, such dreamy manifestations, vague conceptions of the ideal--in other words, that faculty of _abstraction_ which belongs to humanity alone. In order worthily to introduce the new inhabitant who comes to fill the earth with his presence--who brings with him intelligence to comprehend, to admire, to subdue, and to rule the creation (PL. XXXII.), we require nothing more than the grand and simple language of Moses, whom Bossuet calls “the most ancient of historians, the most sublime of philosophers, the wisest of legislators.” Let us listen to the words of the inspired writer: “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his _own_ image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”

“And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, _it was_ very good.”

* * * * *

Volumes have been written upon the question of the unity of the human race; that is, whether there were many centres of the creation of man, or whether our race is derived solely from the Adam of Scripture. We think, with many naturalists, that the stock of humanity is unique, and that the different human races, the negroes, and the yellow race, are only the result of the influence of climate upon organisation. We consider the human race as having appeared for the first time (the mode of his creation being veiled in Divine mystery, eternally impenetrable to us) in the rich plains of Asia, on the smiling banks of the Euphrates, as the traditions of the most ancient races teach us. It is there, where Nature is so rich and vigorous, in the brilliant climate and under the radiant sky of Asia, in the shade of its luxuriant masses of verdure and its mild and perfumed atmosphere, that man loves to represent to himself the father of his race as issuing from the hand of his Creator.

We are, it will be seen, far from sharing the opinion of those naturalists who represent man, at the beginning of the existence of his species, as a sort of ape, of hideous face, degraded mien, and covered with hair, inhabiting caves like the bears and lions, and participating in the brutal instincts of those savage animals.[116] There is no doubt that early man passed through a period in which he had to contend for his existence with ferocious beasts, and to live in a primitive state in the woods or savannahs, where Providence had placed him. But this period of probation came to an end, and man, an eminently social being, by combining in groups, animated by the same interests and the same desires, soon found means to intimidate the animals, to triumph over the elements, to protect himself from the innumerable perils which surrounded him, and to subdue to his rule the other inhabitants of the earth. “The first men,” says Buffon, “witnesses of the convulsive movements of the earth, still recent and frequent, having only the mountains for refuge from the inundations; and often driven from this asylum by volcanoes and earthquakes, which trembled under their feet; uneducated, naked, and exposed to the elements, victims to the fury of ferocious animals, whose prey they were certain to become; impressed also with a common sentiment of gloomy terror, and urged by necessity, would they not unite, first, to defend themselves by numbers, and then to assist each other by working in concert, to make habitations and arms? They began by shaping into the forms of hatchets these hard flints, the Jade, and other stones, which were supposed to have been formed by thunder and fallen from the clouds, but which are, nevertheless, only the first examples of man’s art in a pure state of Nature. He will soon draw fire from these same flints, by striking them against each other; he will seize the flames of the burning volcano, or profit by the fire of the red-hot lava to light his fire of brushwood in the forest; and by the help of this powerful element he cleanses, purifies, and renders wholesome the place he selects for his habitation. With his hatchet of stone he chops wood, fells trees, shapes timber, and puts it together, fashions instruments of warfare and the most necessary tools and implements; and after having furnished themselves with clubs and other weighty and defensive arms, did not these first men find means to make lighter weapons to reach the swift-footed stag from afar? A tendon of an animal, a fibre of the aloe-leaf, or the supple bark of some ligneous plant, would serve as a cord to bring together the two extremities of an elastic branch of yew, forming a bow; and small flints, shaped to a point, arm the arrow. They will soon have snares, rafts, and canoes; they will form themselves into communities composed of a few families, or rather of relations sprung from the same family, as is still the case with some savage tribes, who have their game, fish, and fruits in common. But in all those countries whose area is limited by water, or surrounded by high mountains, these small nations, becoming too numerous, have been in time forced to parcel out the land between them; and from that moment the earth has become the domain of man; he has taken possession of it by his labour, he has cultivated it, and attachment to the soil follows the very first act of possession; the private interest makes part of the national interest; order, civilisation, and laws succeed, and society acquires force and consistency.”[117] We love to quote the sentiments of a great writer--but how much more eloquent would the words of the naturalist have been, if he had added to his own grand eloquence of language, the knowledge which science has placed within reach of the writers of the present time--- if he could have painted man in the early days of his creation, in presence of the immense animal population which then occupied the earth, and fighting with the wild beasts which filled the forests of the ancient world! Man, comparatively very weak in organisation, destitute of natural weapons of attack or defence, incapable of rising into the air like the birds, or living under water like the fishes and some reptiles, might seem doomed to speedy destruction. But he was marked on the forehead with the Divine seal. Thanks to the superior gift of an exceptional intelligence, this being, in appearance so helpless, has by degrees swept the most ferocious of its occupants from the earth, leaving those only who cater to his wants or desires, or by whose aid he changes the primitive aspects of whole continents.

[116] It is told of a former distinguished and witty member of the
Geological Society that, having obtained possession of the rooms
on a certain day, when there was to be a general meeting, he
decorated its walls with a series of cartoons, in which the
parts of the members were strangely reversed. In one cartoon
Ichthyosauri and Plesiosauri were occupied with the skeleton of
Homo sapiens; in another, a party of Crustaceans were occupied
with a cranium suspiciously like the same species; while in a
third, a party of Pterichthys were about to dine on a biped with
a suspicious resemblance to a certain well-conditioned F.G.S. of
the day.

[117] “Époques de la Nature,” vol. xii., pp. 322-325. 18mo. Paris,
1778.

* * * * *

The antiquity of man is a question which has largely engaged the attention of geologists, and many ingenious arguments have been hazarded, tending to prove that the human race and the great extinct Mammalia were contemporaneous. The circumstances bearing on the question are usually ranged under three series of facts: 1. The Cave-deposits; 2. Peat and shell mounds; 3. Lacustrine habitations, or Lake dwellings.

We have already briefly touched upon the Cave-deposits. In the Kirkdale Cave no remains or other traces of man’s presence seem to have been discovered. But in Kent’s Hole, an unequal deposit of loam and clay, along with broken bones much gnawed, and the teeth of both extinct and living Mammals, implements evidently fashioned by the human hand were found in the following order: in the upper part of the clay, artificially-shaped flints; on the clay rested a layer of stalagmite, in which streaks of burnt charcoal occurred, and charred bones of existing species of animals. Above the stalagmite a stone hatchet, or celt, made of syenite, of more finished appearance, was met with, with articles of bone, round pieces of blue slate and sandstone-grit, pieces of pottery, a number of shells of the mussel, limpet, and oyster, and other remains, Celtic, British, and Roman, of very early date; the lower deposits are those with which we are here more particularly concerned. The Rev. J. MacEnery, the gentleman who explored and described them, ascertained that the flint-instruments occupied a uniform situation intermediate between the stalagmite and the upper surface of the loam, forming a connecting link between both; and his opinion was that the epoch of the introduction of the knives must be dated antecedently to the formation of the stalagmite, from the era of the quiescent settlement of the mud. From this view it would follow that the cave was visited posteriorly to the introduction and subsidence of the loam, and before the formation of the new super-stratum of stalagmite, by men who entered the cave and disturbed the original deposit. Although flints have been found in the loam underlying the regular crust of stalagmite, mingled confusedly with the bones, and unconnected with the evidence of the visits of man--such as the excavation of ovens or pits--Dr. Buckland refused his belief to the statement that the flint-implements were found beneath the stalagmite, and always contended that they were the work of men of a more recent period, who had broken up the sparry floor. The doctor supposed that the ancient Britons had scooped out ovens in the stalagmite, and that through them the knives got admission to the underlying loam, and that in this confused state the several materials were cemented together.

In 1858 Dr. Falconer heard of the newly-discovered cave at Brixham, on the opposite side of the bay to Torquay, and he took steps to prevent any doubts being entertained with regard to its contents. This cave was composed of several passages, with four entrances, formerly blocked up with breccia and earthy matter; the main opening being ascertained by Mr. Bristow to be seventy-eight feet above the valley, and ninety-five feet above the sea, the cave itself being in some places eight feet wide. The contents of the cave were covered with a layer of stalagmite, from one to fifteen inches thick, on the top of which were found the horns of a Reindeer; under the stalagmite came reddish loam or cave-earth, with pebbles and some angular stones, from two to thirteen feet thick, containing the bones of Elephants, Rhinoceros, Bears, Hyænas, Felis, Reindeer, Horses, Oxen, and several Rodents; and, lastly, a layer of gravel, and rounded pebbles without fossils, underlaid the cave-earth and formed the lowest deposit.

In these beds no human bones were found, but in almost every part of the bone-bed were flint-knives, one of the most perfect being found thirteen feet down in the bone-bed, at its lowest part. The most remarkable fact in connection with this cave was the discovery of an entire left hind-leg of the Cave-bear lying in close proximity to this knife; “not washed in a fossil state out of an older alluvium, and swept afterwards into this cave, so as to be mingled with the flint implements, but having been introduced when clothed in its flesh.” The implement and the Bear’s leg were evidently deposited about the same time, and it only required some approximative estimate of the date of this deposit, to settle the question of the antiquity of man, at least in an affirmative sense.

Mr. H. W. Bristow, who was sent by the Committee of the Royal Society to make a plan and drawings of the Brixham Cave, found that its entrance was situated at a height of ninety-five feet above the present level of the sea. In his Report made to the Royal Society, in explanation of the plan and sections, Mr. Bristow stated that, in all probability, at the time the cave was formed, the land was at a lower level to the extent of the observed distance of ninety-five feet, and that its mouth was then situated at or near the level of the sea.

The cave consisted of wide galleries or passages running in a north and south direction, with minor lateral passages branching off nearly at right angles to the main openings--- the whole cave being formed in the joints, or natural divisional planes, of the rock.

The mouth or entrance to the cave originated, in the first instance, in an open joint or fissure in the Devonian limestone, which became widened by water flowing backwards and forwards, and was partly enlarged by the atmospheric water, which percolated through the cracks, fissures, and open joints in the overlying rock. The pebbles, forming the lowest deposit in the cave, were ordinary shingle or beach-gravel, washed in by the waves and tides. The cave-earth was the residual part of the limestone rock, after the calcareous portion had been dissolved and carried away in solution; and the stalactite and stalagmite were derived from the lime deposited from the percolating water.

With regard to bone-caves generally, it would seem that, like other such openings, they are most common in limestone rocks, where they have been formed by water, which has dissolved and carried away the calcareous ingredient of the rock. In the case of the Brixham cave, the mode of action of the water could be clearly traced in two ways: first, in widening out the principal passages by the rush of water backwards and forwards from the sea; and, secondly, by the infiltration and percolation of atmospheric water through the overlying rock. In both cases the active agents in producing the cave had taken advantage of a pre-existing fissure or crack, or an open joint, which they gradually enlarged and widened out, until the opening received its final proportions.

The cave presented no appearance of ever having been inhabited by man; or of having been the den of Hyænas or other animals, like Wookey Hole in the Mendips, and some other bone-caves. The most probable supposition is, that the hind quarter of the Bear and other bones which were found in the cave-earth, had been washed into the cave by the sea, in which they were floating about.

We draw some inferences of the greatest interest and significance from the Brixham cave and its contents.

We learn that this country was, at one time, inhabited by animals which are now extinct, and of whose existence we have not even a tradition; that man, then ignorant of the use of metal, and little better than the brutes, was the contemporary of the animals whose remains were found in the cave, together with a rude flint-implement--the only kind of weapon with which our savage ancestor defended himself against animals scarcely wilder than himself.

We also learn that after the cave had been formed and sealed up again, as it were, together with all its contents, by the deposition of a solid crust of stalagmite--an operation requiring a very great length of time to effect--the Reindeer (_Cervus Tarandus_) was indigenous to this country, as is proved by the occurrence of an antler of that animal which was found lying upon, and partly imbedded in, the stalagmite forming the roof or uppermost, that is, the latest formed, of the cave-deposits.

Lastly, we learn that, at the time the cave was formed, and while the land was inhabited by man, that part of the country was lower by ninety-five feet than it is now; and that this elevation has probably been produced so slowly and so gradually, as to have been imperceptible during the time it was taking place, which extended over a vast interval of time, perhaps over thousands of years.

Perhaps it may not be out of place here to describe the mode of formation of bone-caves generally, and the causes which have produced the appearances these now present.

Caves in limestone rocks have two principal phases--one of formation, and one of filling up. So long as the water which enters the cavities in the course of formation, and carries off some of the calcareous matter in solution, can find an easy exit, the cavity is continually enlarged; but when, from various causes, the water only enters in small quantities, and does not escape, or only finds its way out slowly, and with difficulty, the lime, instead of being removed, is re-deposited on the walls, roof, sides, and floor of the cavity, in the form of stalactites and stalagmite, and the work of re-filling with solid carbonate of lime then takes place.

Encouraged by the Brixham discoveries, a congress of French and English geologists met at Amiens, in order to consider certain evidence, on which it was sought to establish as a fact that man and the Mammoth were formerly contemporaries.

The valley of the Somme, between Abbeville and Amiens, is occupied by beds of peat, some twenty or thirty feet deep, resting on a thin bed of clay which covers other beds, of sand and gravel, and itself rests on white Chalk with flints. Bordering the valley, some hills rise with a gentle slope to a height of 200 or 300 feet, and here and there, on their summits, are patches of Tertiary sand and clay, with fossils, and again more extensive layers of loam. The inference from this geological structure is that the river, originally flowing through the Tertiary formation, gradually cut its way through the various strata down to its present level. From the depth of the peat, its lower part lies below the sea-level, and it is supposed that a depression of the region has occurred at some period: again, in land lying quite low on the Abbeville side of the valley, but above the tidal level, marine shells occur, which indicate an elevation of the region; again, about 100 feet above the valley, on the right bank of the river, and on a sloping surface, is the Moulin-Quignon, where shallow pits exhibit a floor of chalk covered by gravel and sand, accompanied by gravel and marly chalk and flints more or less worn, well-rounded Tertiary flints and pebbles, and fragments of Tertiary sandstone. Such is the general description of a locality which has acquired considerable celebrity in connection with the question of the antiquity of man.

The Quaternary deposits of Moulin-Quignon and the peat-beds of the Somme formerly furnished Cuvier with some of the fossils he described, and in later times chipped flint-implements from the quarries and bogs came into the possession of M. Boucher de Perthes; the statements were received at first not without suspicion--especially on the part of English geologists who were familiar with similar attempts on their own credulity--that some at least of these were manufactured by the workmen of the district. At length, the discovery of a human jaw and tooth in the gravel-pits of St. Acheul, near Amiens, produced a rigorous investigation into the facts, and it seems to have been established to the satisfaction of Mr. Prestwich and his colleagues, that flint-implements and the bones of extinct Mammalia are met with in the same beds, and in situations indicating very great antiquity. In the sloping and irregular deposits overlooking the Somme, the bones of Elephants, Rhinoceros, with land and fresh-water shells of existing species, are found mingled with flint-implements. Shells like those now found in the neighbouring streams and hedge-rows, with the bones of existing quadrupeds, have been obtained from the peat, with flint-tools of more than usual finish, and together with them a few fragments of human bones. Of these reliquiæ, the Celtic memorials lie below the Gallo-Roman; above them, oaks, alders, and walnut trees occur, sometimes rooted, but no succession of a new growth of trees appear.

The theory of the St. Acheul beds is this: they were deposited by fluviatile action, and are probably amongst the oldest deposits in which human remains occur, older than the peat-beds of the Somme--but what is their _real_ age? Before submitting to the reader the very imperfect answer this question admits of, a glance at the previous discoveries, which tended to give confirmation to the observations just narrated, may be useful.

Implements of stone and flint have been continually turning up during the last century and a half in all parts of the world. In the neighbourhood of Gray’s Inn Lane, in 1715, a flint spear-head was picked up, and near it some Elephants’ bones. In the alluvium of the Wey, near Guildford, a wedge-shaped flint-tool was found in the gravel and sand, in which Elephants’ tusks were also found. Under the cliffs at Whitstable an oval-shaped flint-tool was found in what had probably been a fresh-water deposit, and in which bones of the Bear and Elephant were also discovered. Between Herne Bay and Reculver five other flint-tools have been found, and three more near the top of the cliff, all in fresh-water gravel. In the valley of the Ouse, at Beddenham, in Bedfordshire, flint-implements, like those of St. Acheul, mixed with the bones of Elephant, Rhinoceros, and Hippopotamus, have been found, and near them an oval and a spear-shaped implement. In the peat of Ireland great numbers of such implements have been met with. But nowhere have they been so systematically sought for and classified as in the Scandinavian countries.

The peat-deposits of those countries--of Denmark especially--are formed in hollows and depressions, in the northern drift and Boulder clay, from ten to thirty feet deep. The lower stratum, of two or three feet in thickness, consists of _sphagnum_, over which lies another growth of peat formed of aquatic and marsh plants. On the edge of the bogs trunks of Scotch firs of large size are found--a tree which has not grown in the Danish islands within historic times, and does not now thrive when planted, although it was evidently indigenous within the human period, since Steenstrup took with his own hands a flint-implement from beneath the trunk of one. The sessile variety of the oak would appear to have succeeded the fir, and is found at a higher level in the peat. Higher up still, the common oak, _Quercus robur_, is found along with the birch, hazel, and alder. The oak has in its turn been succeeded by the beech.

Another source from which numerous relics of early humanity have been taken is the midden-heaps (Kjökken-mödden) found along the Scandinavian coast. These heaps consist of castaway shells mixed with bones of quadrupeds, birds, and fishes, which reveal in some respects the habits of the early races which inhabited the coast. Scattered through these mounds are flint-knives, pieces of pottery, and ashes, but neither bronze nor iron. The knives and hatchets are said to be a degree less rude than those of older date found in the peat. Mounds corresponding to these, Sir Charles Lyell tells us, occur along the American coast, from Massachusetts and Georgia. The bones of the quadrupeds found in these mounds correspond with those of existing species, or species which have existed in historic times.

By collecting, arranging, and comparing the flint and stone implements, the Scandinavian naturalists have succeeded in establishing a chronological succession of periods, which they designate--1. The Age of Stone; 2. The Age of Bronze; 3. The Age of Iron. The first, or Stone period, in Denmark, corresponded with the age of the Scotch fir, and, in part, of the sessile oak. A considerable portion of the oak period corresponded, however, with the age of _bronze_, swords made of that metal having been found in the peat on the same level with the oak. The _iron_ age coincides with the beech. Analogous instances, confirmatory of these statements, occur in Yorkshire, and in the fens of Lincolnshire.

The traces left indicate that the aborigines went to sea in canoes scooped out of a single tree, bringing back deep-sea fishes. Skulls obtained from the peat and from tumuli, and believed to be contemporaneous with the mounds, are small and round, with prominent supra-orbital ridges, somewhat resembling the skulls of Laplanders.

The third series of facts (_Lake-dwellings_, or _lacustrine habitations_) consisted of the buildings on piles, in lakes, and once common in Asia and Europe. They are first mentioned by Herodotus as being used among the Thracians of Pæonia, in the mountain-lake Prasias, where the natives lived in dwellings built on piles, and connected with the shore by a narrow causeway, by which means they escaped the assaults of Xerxes. Buildings of the same description occupied the Swiss lakes, in the mud of which hundreds of implements, like those found in Denmark, have been dredged up. In Zurich, Moosseedorf near Berne, and Lake Constance, axes, celts, pottery, and canoes made out of single trees, have been found; but of the human frame scarcely a trace has been discovered. One skull dredged up at Meilen, in the Lake of Zurich, was intermediate between the Lapp-like skull of the Danish tumuli and the more recent European type.

The age of the different formations in which these records of the human race are found will probably ever remain a mystery. The evidence which would make the implements formed by man contemporaneous with the Mammoth and other great Mammalia would go a great way to prove that man was also pre-glacial. Let us see how that argument stands.

At the period when the upper Norwich Crag was deposited, the general level of the British Isles is supposed to have been about 600 feet above its present level, and so connected with the European continent as to have received the elements of its fauna and flora from thence.

By some great change, a period of depression occurred, in which all the country north of the mouth of the Thames and the Bristol Channel was placed much below the present level. Moel Tryfaen experienced a submergence of at least 1,400 feet, during which it received the erratic blocks and other marks, indicative of floating icebergs, which have been described in a former chapter. The country was raised again to something like its original level, and again occupied by plants, Molluscs, Fishes and Reptiles, Birds, and Mammifera. Again subsidence takes place, and, after several oscillations, the level remains as we now find it. The estimated time required for these various changes is something enormous, and might have extended the term to double the number of years. The unit of the calculation is the upward rate of movement observed on the Scandinavian coast; applied to the oscillation of the ancient coast of Snowdonia, the figures represent 224,000 years for the several oscillations of the glacial period. Adding the pre-glacial period, the computation gives an additional 48,000 years. But, let us repeat, the figures and data are somewhat hypothetical.

With regard to the St. Acheul beds--said to be the most ancient formation in which the productions of human hands have been found--they are confessedly older than the peat-beds, and the time required for the production of other peat-beds of equal thickness has been estimated at 7,000 years. The antiquity of the gravel-beds of St. Acheul may be estimated on two grounds:--1. General elevation above the level of the valley. 2. By estimating the animal-remains found in the gravel-beds, and not in the peat. The first question implies the denudation of the valley below the level of the gravel, or the elevation of the whole plateau. Each of these operations would involve an incalculable time, for want of data. In the second case, judging from the slow rate at which quadrupeds have disappeared in historic times, the extinct Mammoth and other great animals must have occupied many centuries in dying out, for the notion that they died out suddenly from sharp and sudden refrigeration, is not generally admitted.

With regard to the three ages of stone, bronze, and iron, M. Morlot has based some calculations upon the condition of the delta of Tinière, near Villeneuve, which lead him to assign to the oldest, or stone period, an age of 5,000 to 7,000 years, and to the bronze period from 3,000 to 4,000. We may, then, take leave of this subject with the avowal that, while admitting the probability that an immense lapse of time would be required for the operations described, we are, in a great measure, without reliable data for estimating its actual extent.

The opinion which places the creation of man on the banks of the Euphrates in Central Asia is confirmed by an event of the highest importance in the history of humanity, and by a crowd of concordant traditions, preserved by different races of men, all tending to confirm it. We speak of the Asiatic deluge.

The Asiatic deluge--of which sacred history has transmitted to us the few particulars we know--was the result of the upheaval of a part of the long chain of mountains which are a prolongation of the Caucasus. The earth opening by one of the fissures made in its crust in course of cooling, an eruption of volcanic matter escaped through the enormous crater so produced. Volumes of watery vapour or steam accompanied the lava discharged from the interior of the globe, which, being first dissipated in clouds and afterwards condensing, descended, in torrents of rain, and the plains were drowned with the volcanic mud. The inundation of the plains over an extensive radius was the immediate effect of this upheaval, and the formation of the volcanic cone of Mount Ararat, with the vast plateau on which it rests, altogether 17,323 feet above the sea, the permanent result. The event is graphically detailed in the seventh chapter of Genesis.

11. “In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.

12. “And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.”

* * * * *

17. “And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth.

18. “And the waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark went upon the face of the waters.

19. “And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that _were_ under the whole heaven, were covered.

20. “Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered.

21. “And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man:

22. “All in whose nostrils _was_ the breath of life, of all that _was_ in the dry land, died.

23. “And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained _alive_, and they that _were_ with him in the ark.

24. “And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days.”

All the particulars of the Biblical narrative here recited are only to be explained by the volcanic and muddy eruption which preceded the formation of mount Ararat. The waters which produced the inundation of these countries proceeded from a volcanic eruption accompanied by enormous volumes of vapour, which in due course became condensed and descended on the earth, inundating the extensive plains which now stretch away from the foot of Ararat. The expression, “the earth,” or “all the earth” as it is translated in the Vulgate, which might be implied to mean the entire globe, is explained by Marcel de Serres, in a learned book entitled “La Cosmogonie de Moïse,” and other philologists, as being an inaccurate translation. He has proved that the Hebrew word _haarets_, incorrectly translated “all the earth,” is often used in the sense of _region_ or _country_, and that, in this instance, Moses used it to express only the part of the globe which was then peopled, and not its entire surface. In the same manner “_the mountains_” (rendered “_all the mountains_” in the Vulgate), only implies all the mountains known to Moses. Similarly, M. Glaire, in the “Christomathie Hébraïque,” which he has placed at the end of his Grammar, quotes the passage in this sense: “The waters were so prodigiously increased, that the highest mountains of the vast horizon were covered by them;” thus restricting the mountains covered by the inundation to those bounded by the horizon.

Nothing occurs, therefore, in the description given by Moses, to hinder us from seeing in the Asiatic deluge a means made use of by God to chastise and punish the human race, then in the infancy of its existence, and which had strayed from the path which he had marked out for it. It seems to establish the countries lying at the foot of the Caucasus as the cradle of the human race; and it seems to establish also the upheaval of a chain of mountains, preceded by an eruption of volcanic mud, which drowned vast territories entirely composed, in these regions, of plains of great extent. Of this deluge many races besides the Jews have preserved a tradition. Moses dates it from 1,500 to 1,800 years before the epoch in which he wrote. Berosus, the Chaldean historian, who wrote at Babylon in the time of Alexander, speaks of a universal deluge, the date of which he places immediately before the reign of Belus, the father of Ninus.

The _Vedas_, or sacred books of the Hindus, supposed to have been composed about the same time as Genesis, that is, about 3,300 years ago, make out that the deluge occurred 1,500 years before their time. The _Guebers_ speak of the same event as having occurred about the same date.

Confucius, the celebrated Chinese philosopher and lawgiver, born towards the year 551 before Christ, begins his history of China by speaking of the Emperor named Jas, whom he represents as making the waters flow back, which, _being raised to the heavens_, washed the feet of the highest mountains, covered the less elevated hills, and inundated the plains. Thus the Biblical deluge (PLATE XXXIII.) is confirmed in many respects; but it was local, like all phenomena of the kind, and was the result of the upheaval of the mountains of western Asia.