Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/73

Rh absurd also is the denial that it may have been as wide as the whole area occupied by man at some early stage of his dispersion! Further, can he tell us whether this "great submergence" over more than one great area, was balanced or not by any corresponding elevation over some other? And if it was, then can he tell us whether the elevation may not possibly have been a raising of some ocean floor? And if it was, can he assure us that the "fountains of the great deep" did not perforce pour their waters over corresponding areas of the land? Can he tell us how deep the great submergence was, as well as how wide? Above all, can he tell us how slow it was, or how rapid? If he can't tell us any one of these things, or make even a plausible attempt to do so, then he has no right to tell the world that Quaternary geology "knows nothing" of any more adequate basis for the world-wide tradition of a deluge than a flood in Mesopotamia. Quaternary geology is still in great confusion, the prey of extreme theorists, and of many baseless hypotheses. But it is not quite in such a mess as Prof. Huxley would represent it to be. For one thing, it has established "the great submergence" with all its consequences.

But this is not all. When once the scales of preconception and of spurious authority have fallen from our eyes, they are opened to other facts which have been as clearly ascertained, as timidly regarded, and as feebly interpreted. In particular we see the fleshly bodies, and the complete skeletons, and the collected and compacted bones of millions of great animals which have perished—very lately—many without leaving descendants—and have so perished as to be preserved in superficial deposits scattered over many portions of the globe. In my own case, it was the futility of the explanation given of these facts of Quaternary geology by the Lyellian school that first awoke my attention, now many years ago, to the untrustworthiness of the method in which these facts were handled. Nothing that savored of the possibility of "catastrophes" would that school even look at fairly in the face. No idea that would not fit, or could not be squeezed, into their own narrow interpretations of the doctrine of uniformity, could find entrance into minds swathed in the bandages of the great hurdy-gurdy theory. I can not in these pages give, even in abstract, the astonishing facts which Quaternary geology has established respecting the death and preservation of what are called the Pliocene and the Pleistocene mammalia—and this, too, both in the Old and in the New World. They have lately been collected and marshaled with exhaustive research, and with admirable ability, by Mr. Howorth, M. P., in his book on The Mammoth and the Flood. I observe that a most significant silence has been maintained respecting this array of facts and arguments, and that the