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-not a fragment where other fragments more slender and fragile occur in abundance. It is true, the search has yet been confined to a small portion of Europe; but the fact is somewhat significant, and forbids any attempt at generalisation till wider areas in Asia and America have been explored. Till this is done, and till bones and crania have been found and examined, it will be impossible to decide the ethnographic character of these early men, or to say whether they appeared in Asiatic, European, and American species, and consequently arose from various creative centres, or were merely time-distributed varieties of a single and one-created form. Geology, as far as the facts have been collated, gives no countenance to the idea of a plurality of creative centres. On the contrary, the sameness of the stone-implements, wherever they have been found, evince.

[blocks in formation]

1, 2, From valley of Somme; 3, 4, 5, England; 6, 7, 8, Canada; 9, 10, Scandinavia.

a similarity of idea-the same conception and the same design. Those, therefore, who, disregarding the unity of

language, mental constitution, and religious sentiment of the human race, will still contend for several creative centres, must seek other corroboration of their hypothesis than is yet afforded by the discoveries and indications of geology.

As the pre-glacial passed gradually into the glacial, and the glacial into the post-glacial period; so the pre-human passes insensibly into the pre-historic, and the pre-historic into the historical ages. And even when the historical arrives, the record of our own race is often less certain in the hands of the historian than in those of the geologist. Geology by no means ceases where history begins. Vast physical changes have occurred since man first peopled the globe.* Some regions have been rising above the waters of the ocean, others have been sinking. Rivers have changed their courses; lakes and estuaries have been converted into alluvial tracts; and volcanoes have given birth to new mountain masses.

"There rolls the deep where grew the tree;
Oh, Earth, what changes hast thou seen!
There, where the long street roars, has been
The stillness of the central sea."

Of such mutations, history is altogether silent; and even where she speaks, her utterance is frequently of less value than her silence. The earth, however, pens and preserves with fidelity her own record: geology becomes her interpreter. As in the physical world, so also in the vital, important mutations have been effected, even within historical times. Many local removals of species and several general

*For an able and lucid exposition of the recent changes to which the earth has been subjected, the reader is referred to Sir Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology-a work which should be carefully studied by every one who would lay a logical and solid foundation for his geological knowledge.

extinctions have taken place, and this altogether apart from the effects produced by man's cultivation and domestication. The wild-boar, wild-ox, bear, wolf, and beaver have disappeared from Britain; and every century their tenure of Europe becomes more slender and uncertain. The dodo has become extinct in the Mauritius, the solitaire in Rodriguez, the æpiornis in Madagascar, the dinornis in New Zealand, the Phillip's Island parrot from Australia, and the rytina from the rivers and estuaries of Kamtschatka. And as with these, so it will shortly be with others whose circumscribed ranges are gradually being broken in upon by new conditions, imposed either by natural change or by man's progress and civilisation. The apteryx of New Zealand, the ornithorhynchus, echidna, and kangaroo of Australia, the mooruk of New Britain, the ostrich, elephant, and giraffe of Africa, the anrochs of Europe, the beaver and bison of America, the musk-ox of the arctic regions, and many others, look more like the residuary forms of the tertiary, than the advancing species of a newer era. And as with animals, so it has been and will be with many plants (the gigantic Wellingtonia, for instance, confined to a few narrow valleys in California); only we have been less observant of their mutations, and are merely beginning to note their specific restrictions.

As history has failed to note geological mutations and vital extinctions, so we ask her in vain for any evidence of new creations. No doubt, naturalists have now and then announced the "discovery" of a new species of plant or animal, but whether these were existing forms previously unnoticed, or new forms only recently introduced, the imperfection of history leaves us no means of determining. And yet, reasoning from our knowledge of the past, the appearance of new species must take place as infallibly as the disappearance of the old. So long as the energies of

nature continue unimpaired, the balance of vital activity must be maintained. Even man's extirpations and modifications, extensive as they appear, are in a great measure counterbalanced by his introduction and wider distribution of the cultivated plants and domesticated animals in all their endless varieties. The scheme of Life is as progressive now as it ever was, and man himself is as subject to its laws as the meanest form he modifies. The pre-historic nomades of Asia, the stone-implement makers of Europe, and the mound-builders of America, have passed away, and are less known to us in their aspects, thoughts, and doings than their contemporary mammoths, great deer, and wild oxen. The temple-rearing, idol-worshipping races of Babylonia, Egypt, and Central America, have perished, and their characters are merely beginning to be revealed to us; while our more immediate predecessors, the Greeks, Romans, Celts, and early Saxons, have partaken of the same doom, and much of their history remains in doubt and obscurity. Thus, physical features, habits of life, modes of thought, social systems, and religious beliefs-all that renders humanity distinctive, and confers on it its highest attributes-have ever been as mutable and progressive as the phases of nature by which they are surrounded; nor do the realities of the present exhibit the slightest symptom of persistence and finality. As the paleozoic passed into the mesozoic, and the mesozoic into the recent; so the recent is pressing on to a future, that will be stamped by features-physical and vital, social and moral-peculiarly its own.

Supposing, then, that science could determine all the physical and vital conditions of the earth-in other words, could read her history up to the present moment-the question naturally arises, How far we are entitled, in the spirit of philosophy, to presume on what is yet to follow ?

This brings us, in conclusion, to look at the earth's probable Future through her knowledge of her Past. As students of nature, we can no more refrain from this inquiry than we can cease to take an interest in her bygone history. The present is a mere evanishing point: yesterday it was the future, to-morrow it will be the past. Past, pre

sent, and future are but portions of one vast cycle of change; and could we determine with accuracy the rate of progress in the past, the future would be rationally computable. In the mean time our knowledge of world-history is far from perfect, hence our estimate of the future can assume at best little more than the character of speculation. Still,

we are fairly entitled to hold that as the rocky crust has, under the operation of the physical forces, been the theatre of incessant change in the past, so it will continue to be subjected to similar mutations in the future. As we see no decline in the forces that operate, so reason refuses to admit a cessation of their results. Volcanic energy will shift its centres of activity; continents will be submerged; seabeds be uplifted into dry land; climatic influences be altered; living races will succumb to obnoxious conditions; and new ones will appear co-adapted to these newer phases. As in the past the changes were always gradual and local, and the newer phases ever bore a certain appreciable relation to those that went before; so in the future we may rely on a similar gradation, and believe that the differences between the phases yet to be will never exceed those geology has discovered between two successive formations.

As with the physical, so with the vital forces. Age after age has been characterised by its own peculiar phases of vitality, and as we fail to detect any symptom of decline, so we may fairly presume that the future aspects of life will differ from that which now prevails, as that which exists differs from that which preceded. As the course has ever been to

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