PDF - Wallace Online

418 TROPICAL NATUREnorth in Norway. A little earlier we find that reindeerwere common even in the south of France ;and still earlierthis animal was accompanied by the mammoth and woollyrhinoceros, by the arctic glutton, and by huge bears andlions of extinct species.The presence of such animals impliesa change of climate and both in the caves and; gravels wefind proofs of a much colder climate than now prevails inWestern Europe. Even more remarkable are the changesof the earth's surface which have been effected during man'soccupation of it. Many extensive valleys in England andFrance are believed by the best observers to have beendeepened at least a hundred feet caverns now far out of the;reach of any stream must for a long succession of years havehad streams flowing through them, at least in times offloods ;and this often implies that vast masses of solid rockhave since been worn away. In Sardinia land has risen atleast 300 feet since men lived there who made pottery andprobably used fishing-nets ;while in Kent's Cavern remains*of man are found buried beneath two separate beds ofstalagmite, each having a distinct texture, and each coveringa deposit of cave -earth having well-marked differentialcharacters, while each contains a distinct assemblage ofextinct animals.Such, briefly, are the results of the evidence that hasbeen rapidly accumulating for about fifteen years, as tothe antiquity of man; and it has been confirmed by somany discoveries of a like nature in all parts of the globe,and especially by the comparison of the tools and weaponsof prehistoric man with those of modern savages (so thatthe use of even the rudest flint implements has becomequite intelligible), that we can hardly wonder at the vastrevolution effected in public opinion. Not only is thebelief in man's vast and still unknown antiquity universalamong men of science, but it is hardly disputed by any wellinformedtheologian ;and the present generation of sciencestudentsmust, we should think, be somewhat puzzled tounderstand what there was in the earliest discoveries thatshould have aroused such general opposition, and been metwith such universal incredulity.1Lyell's Antiquity of Man, 4th ed., p. 115.