self-denial under certain circumstances, for weak brethren's sake, our argument has had no connection. They are highly important questions in themselves, and are worthy of frequent and serious consideration. That intemperance abounds in high places and in low, with the debasement and woe thereby occasioned, we are painfully aware; and we fully realise the duty of placing ourselves second to none in the earnest desire and endeavor, that all men should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world. But we deprecate all attempts at being wise above what is written, and of professing to adopt a standard of moral conformity loftier than that observed by Him whose disciples we claim to be. His omniscient eye must have taken in all possible contingencies in each age and generation, until his final advent in judgment; and to suppose that He neglected any necessary safeguard, either in His sacramental appointments, or in the example of His daily life, is to make an arrogant and impious reflection upon His boundless wisdom, mercy, and beneficence. Certainly, all attempts to press the oracles of revealed truth into the support of theories utterly antagonistic to truth, can never receive His sanction or blessing. A temporary triumph for some particular notion or hobby may be obtained, but the ultimate and permanent result can be only disaster.

EDWARD H. JEWETT.

HUG

THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN.

UGH MILLER, the eloquent Scottish geological writer, in his lecture on the paleontological history of animals, said: "We possess another history of the primeval age and subsequent chronology of the human family than that which we find inscribed in the rocks. And it is well that we do so." And he then went on to state that the geological evidence regarding the period of man's first appearance was singularly obscure. His burial customs have had the effect of mingling his remains with those of creatures that were "extinct for ages before he came into existence. The cave which he lived in became his burial place, and so his bones, his pottery, and weapons have been found with the remains "of the cave hyena and cave tiger, with the teeth of the ancient hippopotamus, and the tusks of the primeval elephant." (In other words, with fossils of the pleistocene.) Then again these human remains are rarely seen by geologists in the stratum. in which they occurred. If a geologist "once in a life time" picks up, in a stratified sand or clay, a stone arrow-head or human bone, he finds that his data may be received or rejected, “but not re-examined." And he concludes that the Mosaic writings "at least do fix the antiquity of the human species. This lecture was originally delivered in 1852, and was included in the Testimony of the Rocks in 1856. In it we find illustrated the scepticism of the British geologists at that time in regard to the high antiquity of man. And we also see the influence of a Scripture chronology in affecting the conclusions of a geologist.

Nearly 30 years have passed away since the publication of the "Testimony." The geological relations

of the pleistocene to the recent and present periods are now much better understood. An attempt will here be made to develop some of these relations, as affording some general ideas of the lapse of time since the glacial epoch.

Beginning with Hugh Miller's own Scotland, attention will be first directed to the testimony of its later river and estuary deposits. The general characteristics of these deposits are well exhibited in the cases of the Tay and the Earn. First (going from above downwards) are the most recent beds which are left exposed. The top of these beds on one or both sides forms a terrace, the water-level being below. Next comes the Carse clay, the flat top of which rises from 32 to 40 feet above the sea-level, and is higher than the recent terrace. In the more seaward portions it contains marine shells. In other localities in Scotland it is sometimes covered by a forest rooted in it. Below the Carse comes a former land surface, as shown by rooted trees and rootlets; evidence of fresh water is afforded by peat at the top of this deposit. River sands, in which occur boulders and scattered stones, form the next lower bed. Underlying this comes a marine bed containing shells of an arctic character. The river to which the overlying bed is due had cut away over 100 feet deep into this marine bed. The top of the marine bed rises 100 feet above the present sea-level. Below all comes a glacial boulder clay.

The series of changes indicated by this succession of deposits is eloquent of great lapses of time. After the boulder clay had clothed the land we must allow for a submergence of over 100 feet, as related to the present sea-level, and still more as related to the land surface of the times of the boulder clay. Time is required for the extension southward of the arctic mollusks, and for the accumulation of considerably more than 100 feet of deposit. Then there is the time during which the marine beds were raised, and the river was engaged in cutting down into them. And after that there is the time for the accumulation of the river sands. The scattered stones

and boulders show that the climate was still cold, river ice and the existence of glaciers of local character at points higher up stream, accounting for this dropped material. The river bottom, while the sands were accumulating, was above sea-level, and was probably constantly moving upwards with the general rise of the land. For next we find peat marshes and dry land, forests having become rooted in the sands. The elevating movement was now followed by subsidence, forests could no longer grow in the marshes in which the peat mosses were forming, the land having been carried down so that the river-level was above the forest level. Still the land went down, even below the sea-level; the Carse clay with its marine shells is accumulated above the peat. And now again, elevation succeeds to depression, and again the river cuts its way down into the marine beds. Meanwhile the waves of the Sea are elsewhere busy in making sea-beach to be mentioned hereafter. Then comes the final elevation which brings us to the existing state of things with the sea-level below the river terrace and that ancient sea-beach. Surely time is long from the boulder clay to the beginning of the modern sea-beach. How long, we cannot set down in figures; and yet we are not altogether without the means of introducing figures into the

matter.

Hugh Miller [Two Records, in “ Testimony of the Rocks"] shows that the existing coast line has stood historically for seventeen centuries. The angry surf of the present sea in many places has hollowed out caverns in hard trap or gneiss. He asserts that the depth of these caverns, at the lowest geological estimate, implies that the sea has labored in them for twenty-six hundred years. Now above the present level, corresponding to the ancient sea-beach of the 25 to 30 feet level, similar caverns occur in the same rocks of an average depth one and a half times as great. The raised beach, then, marks where the sea began work not nearer to us than 6,500 years ago. But this raised beach of the 25 to 30 feet level is posterior to the

Carse, the top of that marine bed being the highest. All the deposits below the recent river beds are older than this 6,500 years.

In the Fenland of England, which covers an area of about 1,000 square miles, the following facts are observed. The upper beds of the flat are of gravel, with patches of silt and peat. Remains of animals of kinds now existing are found in these beds. The lower beds are-according to localities-of peat, shell marl, marine clay, etc., none of them being continuous throughout the area. In one place five buried forest remains were found, one above another, with peat between. The lowest forest on the basement gravel is 30 feet below the present sea-level. A fresh-water peat moss deposit occurs at the top of these beds. Rising like islands out of the flat are patches of river and estuary gravels, capping a boulder clay which underlies the whole flat. In these gravels remains of pleistocene mammals were found. The island-like patches show that the oldest river and estuary deposits were once continuous. The sea and the rivers must have been at work a long time in cutting them away and sweeping them out before the later deposits could begin to fill up the places of erosion. After that the alternations of forests and peats must be allowed for in a chronological estimate, in addition to the time required for the formation of the original gravels, the place of which they occupied.

Each of the surveys already made starts from a boulder clay as the most ancient fact, and follows on downward in time through the post-glacial deposits. Attention will now be directed to evidence dealing with the times of the interglacial.

In England, at Brandon, no less than three boulder clays occur separated from each other by other beds. The lowest of these clays, the great chalky, marks the climax of glacial activity. Elsewhere the Cromer boulder clay occurs lower than the last named, making four of these clays in all. Underneath the chalky clay at Brandon is a fresh-water deposit, as shown by its shells; elsewhere marine shells of a southern character occur.