There is a third way in which tliis intermingling of the bones of animals of different ages may be accounted for. With legard to the remarkable caverns in the province of Liege, Sir Charles Lyell says that Dr. Schmerling, the naturalist, by whom they had been carefully and laboriously examined, did not think they were " dens of wild beasts, but that their organic and inorganic contents had been swept into them by streams communicating with the sur- face of the country. The bones, he suggested, may often have been rolled in the beds of such streams before they reached their underground destination." ^ It is clear, therefore, that no conclu- sive argument to prove that man was contemporary with certain extinct animals can be drawn from the fact that their remains have in some rare instances been found in the same localities.
Human Bones found deeply hurled.
Still less weight is to be attached to the fact that human bones have been found dee|)ly buried in the earth. Every one knows that great changes have been made in the earth's surface within the historic period. Such changes are produced sometimes by the slow operation of the causes which have buried the foundations of such ancient cities as Jerusalem and Rome far beneath the present surface of the ground. At other times they have been brought about by sudden catastrophes. It is not surprising that human remains should be found in peat-bogs, if as Sir Charles Lyell tells us, " All the coins, axes, arms, and other utensils found in British and French mosses, are Roman ; so that a considerable portion of the peat in European peat-bogs is evidently not more ancient than the age of Julius Caesar." ^
The data by which the rate of deposits is determined are so uncertain that no dependence can be placed upon them. Sir Charles Lyell says, " the lowest estimate of the time required " for the formation of the existing delta of the Mississippi, is more than one hundred thousand years.^ According to the careful examina- tion made by gentlemen of the Coast Survey and other United States officers, the time during which the delta has been in progress is four thousand four hundred years.* Since the memory of man, or, since fishing-huts have been built on the coasts of Sweden, there has been such a subsidence of the coast that " a fishing-hut having
1 Antiquity of Man, p. 64. a Principles of Geology, p. 721.
3 Antiquity of Man, p. 43.
* See Report upon the Physics and Hydraulics of the Mississippi River, etc., by Captain A- A. Humphrej-s, and Lieutenant H. L. Abbott, Corps of Topographical Engiaeers, U. 8. Army, 1801, p. 435.
38 PART n. Ch. I —origin of max.
a rude fire-place within, was struck, in digging a canal, at a deptli of sixty feet." ^ " At the earthquake iu 1819 about the Delta of the Indus, an area of two thousand square miles became an inland sea, and the fort and village of Sindree sunk till the tops of the houses were just above the water. Five and a half miles from Sindree, parallel with this sunken area, a region was elevated ten feet above the delta, fifty miles long and in some parts ten broad." '^ While such changes, secular and paroxysmal, gradual and sudden, have been in operation for thousands of years, it is evident that the intermingling of the remains of recent with those of extinct races of animals furnishes no proof that the former were contem- poraneous with the latter.
Flint Implements.
Quite as much stress has been laid on the discovery of certain implements made of flint under deposits which, it is contended, are of such age as prove that man must have existed on the earth tbr ages before the time assigned in the Bible for his creation. To this argument the same answer is to be given. First, that the presence of the wurks of human art in such deposits is no proof that men were contemporaneous with such deposits ; in view of the upheavals and displacements which all geologists admit ai'e of frequent occurrence in the history of our globe. And secondly, the facts themselves are disputed, or differently interpreted by men of science of equal authority. Tliis is especially true of the flint arrows, beads, and axes found in the valley of the Somme in France.^ Lyell is confident that the argument from them is con- clusive. Later examinations, however, have led others to a dift'er- ent conclusion. This is a question for scientific men to decide among themselves, and which they alone are competent to decide. So long, however, as men of the highest rank as naturalists maintain that science knows of no facts inconsistent with the Scriptural ac- count of the origin of man, the friends of the Bible are under no obligation to depart from the generally received interpretation of the Scriptures on this subject. Professor Guyot, as all who know him or have heard his public lectures, are well aware, teaches that there are no known facts which may not be accounted for on the assumption that man has existed seven or eight thousand years on this earth. It is well known also that this doctrine, until very
1 Dana's Manual of Geology, p. 586. « Ibid. p. 588.
s To these Lyell devotes the seventh and eighth chapters of his work ou the Antiquity oj Man.