Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/75

Rh lived, and fed, and were destroyed. This gravel stretches up the valley of the Thames, till it reaches elevations eight hundred and fifty feet above the level of the sea. It contains pebbles, washed, rolled, and translated all the way from the rocks of the Ardennes. This alone records a depression of the land great enough to swamp, not only the greater part of Europe, but the greater part of the habitations of man all over the globe. Prof. Prestwich expressly connects these gravels with great changes in physical geography, and with the destruction of the older or "Pliocene mammalia."

It is impossible in these pages to treat this subject in detail. I have dealt with it at all—and of necessity in the merest outline—only because the confident assertions of a man so eminent as Prof. Huxley are apt to intimidate young inquirers, and to keep up in their minds the fatal preconceptions of spurious authority. But they should remember that though Prof. Huxley is a distinguished expert in biology in all its branches, including paleontology, he enjoys no similar authority in dynamical or stratigraphical geology. Ne sutor ultra crepidam. Still less can he, or indeed any other man, be allowed to browbeat our reason in coming to those conclusions which men of even ordinary understanding are perfectly competent to draw from facts which others have ascertained.

There are many miscellaneous things in Prof. Huxley's article on which I have no space to comment. It reminds me of a witty description once given of a favorite but somewhat barbaric Scotch dish—the boiled head of a sheep—"There's a lot of fine confused feeding upon't." A few of these miscellaneous morsels may be tasted in the mean time. Prof. Huxley makes a very lofty claim for Science. It belongs to her, he tells us, to deal with the problem "of the origin of the present state of the heavens and the earth," and also that of "the origin of man among living things." "The present state" are limiting words which make the claim somewhat ambiguous. "The present state" of the earth certainly belongs to history, and much of it to very recent history indeed; and so with regard to the origin of man, if it be equally limited to his "present state." The present state of the members of the Royal Society would be an inquiry not necessarily leading us very far into the past. But if the "origin of their species among living beings" be intended, then science has hitherto offered no suggestion, except that they are all descendants from "some arboreal creature with pointed ears." Science has a good deal to do yet if the task assigned to her by Prof. Huxley is ever to be completed. Another boast goes very near to the assertion that to