daily. You cannot feel the cold hand now; that was put off with the frail mortality. The hand he lays in yours is warm with life. He draws you home to him. You must see Hood in his home to know him: see how he touches with something of beauty the homeliest domestic relationships; see how he will transmute the leadenest cares into the gold of wit or poetry; keep a continual ripple of mirth and sparkle of sunny light playing over the smiling surface that hides the quiet dark deeps where the tragic life is lived unseen; from the saddest, dreariest night overhead bring out fairy worlds of exquisite fancy touched with rosiest light. And whatsoever place his name may win in the Temple of Fame, it is destined to be a household word with all who speak the English language. Though not one of the highest and most majestic amongst Immortals, he will always be among those who are near and dear to the English heart for the sake of his noble pleading of the cause of the Poor, and few names will call forth so tender a familiarity of affection as that of rare 'Tom Hood.'

ART. III.-The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man, with Remarks on Theories of the Origin of Species by Variation. By Sir Charles Lyell, F.R.S. 2nd Ed., pp. 528. 1863.

GE

YEOLOGY no longer deserves the reproach uttered by the first and greatest of palæontologists, that its votaries neglected the study of the later periods of the history of the earth, and sought no help from a knowledge of its actual state toward explaining its former conditions. During the halfcentury which has elapsed since Cuvier declared himself to be an 'antiquary of a new order,' his successors have arrived at the clear conception of the real unity of the whole system of terrestrial events, depending on the general forces of heat and motion, which may be regarded as almost constant in their effects, and the special operations on the land, in the sea, and in the air, which are not the same for successive instants of time, or separated points on the surface of the planet. In the mind of the geologists of the present day, the monuments of the past and the phenomena now passing before us concur to form one united basis of a just history of natural processes on the earth.

The principle, so long contested, so hard to master, the principle that the causes now manifested in action are the same which have been employed from the beginning, has at length acquired

universal

universal acceptance. Geology is fairly registered and takes high rank among the inductive sciences; contributing to all facts of great importance in their history, and gathering from all substantial aid toward the sound interpretation of its many discoveries. To astronomy it furnishes sensible proofs of the vast antiquity and successive conditions of this globe; and receives in return the precious results of the planetary theory which include these conditions. From mechanical science it borrows speculative investigations as to the condition of the interior of the earth, and the fracture of its crust; and repays the obligation by positive truths regarding the elevation of mountains, and the excavation of valleys, the varying depths of the sea, the direction of ancient currents, and the courses of ancient rivers. Zoology and botany no longer stand aloof and gaze in despair at the wondrous forms of plants and animals of earlier ages of the world; but after strict research admit the Saurian monsters of the oolite, and the gigantic plants of the coal, to vacant places in the great series of life which nothing now living could fill. Every branch of science has been disturbed by the progress of geological discovery, and perplexed by the new questions to which it has given rise.

The answers to these questions have brought to view a new difficulty which affects the whole course of geological interpretation, and every determination in which time is one of the elements. It is agreed on all hands that the phenomena of ancient nature can only be interpreted by the aid of the physical laws which now prevail on the land, in the waters, and in the air. The effects wrought in ancient nature are rightly referred to the forces which produce similar results before our eyes. The measure of these effects in a given interval of time varies from place to place, and from time to time, in conformity with the conditions under which the cause operates. If this measure be hard to fix in this present period, how is it to be ascertained for ancient periods?

Sir C. Lyell has many followers who hold, perhaps more strictly than he requires, the opinion that the physical condition of the globe is, on the whole, unaffected by time, and that the changes in early geological periods must be measured by the same rate as those now in progress. Others maintain that our actual system of slow and almost insensible physical change must not be applied to earlier ages when some of the causes acted with higher energy, and produced far greater effects in a given time than now, because they operated under conditions of the earth quite different from what we now perceive.

When geologists of these opposite opinions look at the same Vol. 114.-No. 228.

2 B

great

great phenomena, such as the uplifted Alps, or the fractured mountains in the north of England, they are equally impressed by the magnitude of the effect; but the one sees in it the unequivocal evidence of a great internal power capable of displacing by an uninterrupted short effort large tracts of country and vast masses of rock; the other speaks of small measures of force operating continually, or at short intervals, through an immensity of time.

In the cases now quoted we give the preference to the opinion which assigns to the enormous fractures and violent wrenches in the mountains a force of great magnitude and short period. In other cases, especially where subsidence is indicated, as in the coalfields of Wales, the time appears to have been very long, the movement secular and slow. From a study of these and innumerable other cases, the right conclusion seems to be that the rate of progress of geological events in every age can be discovered only by a study of the particular effects; if these be of a critical and determinate character, the period of time consumed in producing them may be a subject for deliberate estimate; if not, it can only be a matter for conjecture without limit. The reader of 'Evidences of the Antiquity of Man' should keep this in mind.

In

Two centuries separate us from the days of Agostino Scilla, who vainly claimed for the fishes and shells buried in Italian rocks the recognition of their former residence in the sea. that short interval of years every region of the earth has been searched for these remains of ancient life; ten thousand species of fossils, mostly of marine origin, are known to occur in the rocks of the British Islands alone; more than twice that number enter the general catalogue. It is no longer denied that they are the remains of creatures once endowed with life, and subject to growth, decay, and death; they are acknowledged for the most part to belong to earlier systems of life, — several such systems, indeed,-which began, endured, and passed away before the birth of man. Except in the merely superficial deposits, in peat or gravel, in the sediments of rivers, or the caverns of rocks, the remains of men have never been found. Nor in general have the remains of the quadrupeds most useful to man been recognised, except in similar situations. So that on a first view of the subject, there appears in the very latest step of the geological scale of time only a mere trace for the period of man and his contemporaries, while earlier races of living things, which filled the waters and covered the land, vindicate for themselves an immensity of unchronicled ages. In the contemplation of these unmeasured periods, and

the

the great vicissitudes of the life and physical condition of the globe by which they were marked, geologists have always found the pleasure and felt the preference naturally due to the rich fields of their own discoveries. No treatment seemed too bold for problems which embraced the beginning and progress, the extinction and renewal of life, the fusion and solidification of mountains, the uplifting of continents, the alternations of polar and tropical climates.

Much more limited and far less persevering was the attention given to the later pages of the chronicle of natural events, in which no great latitude of speculation seemed possible; which, indeed, were at one time contemptuously treated as 'superficial deposits.' What could be expected of grand or striking among heaps of old sea gravel, or modern river sediments; the last feeble efforts of those once powerful agencies, whose Titanic struggle had continued 'donec quiescentibus causis, atque equilibratis,'* the settled order of things emerged which is suited to the abode of mankind? By the hands of Cuvier, in the gypsum quarries of Paris, the spell of this indolent prejudice was broken. There, in these neglected deposits, was found an array of extinct vertebrata, whose nearest analogues were to be sought on the other side of the earth, in a climate quite different from that of modern Europe. The noble volumes which enshrine the anatomical descriptions of these and a multitude of other 'Ossemens Fossiles,' contain in the admirable preliminary discourse a critical examination of some arguments touching the antiquity of man, and a decided opinion that the period which has elapsed since the last great and sudden 'revolution,' whereby the old continents were overwhelmed and the present lands laid dry, cannot be placed at much above 5000 or 6000 years ago.† The revolution here referred to was afterwards described by Dr. Buckland as a great flood, which first covered and then retired from the northern zones of the earth. He regarded this flood as the 'universal deluge,' and declares that mankind had not established themselves in those countries which were occupied by the races of extinct quadrupeds, whose remains lie in caverns and in other 'antediluvian'deposits. These dicta of the two most eminent expounders of the fossil mammalogy were not uttered without the knowledge of several examples of the occurrence in the same caverns of the bones of men and extinct mammalia; nor without some careful consideration of these examples, especially in Germany and England. The result of the consideration, how

*Leibnitz, Protogea.'

The first edition of the 'Ossemens Fossiles' was in 1812.

ever, was a decided opinion that though found in the same locality, they did not belong to coexistent races, the remains of men being of later date. How completely the opinion was established that the remains of men or of human art, wherever discovered, were nowhere of the same date as the remains of extinct mammalia, may be seen in Meyer's 'Palæologica' (1832), which notices many occurrences of human reliquiæ; and Lyell's 'Elements of Geology' (edition 1855), in which the 'recent' or 'human' period is marked off in a positive manner, and placed expressly above and distinct from ancient raised beaches, loose alluvial gravel, brickearth, &c., with shells of living species, and bones of quadrupeds both extinct and living, but no 'human remains.'

What can have occurred to disturb a conclusion so uniform, deliberate, and long-sustained? What new discoveries of greater clearness and completeness have thrown into the shade the many examples already explained and recorded? What new teachers have arisen to give better and more authoritative interpretations of facts so often examined? And lastly, what arguments can have convinced Sir C. Lyell of the necessity of revising the judgment which he had pronounced after personal examination of the evidence, and of admitting the coexistence of man with the mammoth in periods far older than those usually assigned to our race?

The answer is very simple. One cavern carefully examined within the last five years has furnished trustworthy data by which the less exact records of earlier explorations may be in some cases better understood, in others confirmed or corrected. If Kent's Hole had been completely described, Brixham Cave would have been less celebrated.

Kent's Hole, Torquay, was explored by the Rev. J. McEnery with so much success that as early as the year 1826 he presented collections of the bones to different institutions, and compiled MS. notices, with comments by Cuvier and Buckland, to accompany his donations.

Mr. McEnery's memoirs were perhaps never completed, and when at length published after his death,† appeared to be neither fully digested, nor illustrated by sufficient maps, sections, and measures. On this account it is somewhat difficult to gather an exact general view of the facts which he observed. It appears, however, that on the hard limestone floor of Kent's Hole lies an

*Lyell, Elem. of Geol.,' p. 105.

+Cavern Researches by the late Rev. J. McEnery, F.G.S.' Edited by E. Vivian, Esq. 1859. Some detached portions were, however, made public in 1851 and 1856. [Brit. Assoc. Reports.]

unequal