HUMAN REMAINS.

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coming so conceited as to fancy ourselves to be the first rational occupiers of this earthly globe.

The Huttonian system, is a system of decay and renovation, but now we know there are some things not likely to decay during such transitions; and others, which so far from requiring renovation, will turn up fully manufactured; and if the places had not perished and the manufacturers with them, capable of directing our successors where to have more made, if they should come to want them.

It cannot be denied, that all the things which Mr. Lyell very justly represents to be continually carried, by different accidents, to the bottom of the sea, are according to the Huttonian system, to be expected to appear again, and probably to be sought after by the inhabitants of succeeding continents, as fossil reliquiæ. Now, the fossil reliquiæ of the continents we inhabit, are by this time pretty well known. But what a much more abundant harvest of curious reliquiæ, may our successors be in the way to reap than is the case with ourselves, who can not only not find any ready made articles, either of use or ornament, but not so much as the fossil bones of any manufacturer of such commodities. I will quote the editor of one of the Baron Cuvier's works to this effect

"We have now," says he, "to notice a fact connected with fossil osteology, of the most singular and striking kind. We find, as has been seen, quadrupeds of different genera, cetacea, birds, reptiles, fishes, insects, mollusca, and vegetables in a fossil state; but to the present moment no human remains have been found, nor any traces of the works of man, in those particular formations, where these different

by this assertion is, that no human bones have been found in the regular strata of the surface of the globe. In turf bogs, alluvial beds, and ancient burying grounds, they are disinterred as abundantly as the bones of other living species; similar remains are found in the cliffs of rocks, and sometimes in caves where stalactite is accumulated upon them; and the stage of decomposition in which they are found, and other circumstances, prove the comparative recentness of their deposition; but not a fragment of human bone has been found in such situations as can lead us to suppose that our species was contemporary with the more ancient races. The Palæotheria, Anoplotheria, or even with the elephants and rhinoceroses of comparatively a later date.

66

Many authors, indeed, have asserted that debris of the human species have been found among the fossils properly so called, but a careful examination of the facts, has proved that they were utterly mistaken 1."

1

The same may be asserted of all articles of human fabrication; nothing of that description has ever been found indicating the existence of the human race at an era antecedent to the last general catastrophe of the globe, in those countries where the strata have been examined, and the fossil discoveries we are treating of been made. Yet there is nothing in the composition of human bones, that should prevent their being preserved as well as others; they are found in ancient fields of battle, equally well preserved with those of horses, whose bones, we know, are found abundantly in the fossil state.

1 See the Discours Preliminaire to Cuvier's Ossemens Fossiles.

CUVIER ON THE ANTIQUITIES OF GREECE. 115

"The result then, of all of our investigations serves to prove, that the human race was not co-eval with the fossil genera and species, for no reason can be assigned why man should have escaped from the revolutions which destroyed those other beings, nor, if he did not escape, why his remains should not be found intermingled with theirs.

"It is not meant however to say, that man did not exist at all in the eras alluded to, he might have inhabited a limited portion of the earth, and begun to extend his race over the rest of its surface, after the terrible convulsions that had devastated it were passed away. His ancient country, however, remains as yet undiscovered. It may, for aught we know, lie buried, and his bones along with it, under the existing ocean, and but a remnant of his race have escaped to continue the human population of the globe 1."

I shall conclude this part of my work with a passage from Cuvier himself, so consonant to what I have said elsewhere in support of the Mosaic history, as not reasonably to be passed over; if as the geologists of Cuvier's own school insist, such a countless succession of mundane revolutions have passed, how could Moses without preternatural assistance, have ventured to speak of the race of man, as comparatively so recent an introduction? He is supposed by his mythological interpreters, to have only collected his materials from ancient traditions, and something as extravagantly fabulous, as the legendary tales of our old monkish writers; but the Baron Cuvier, writing of the Grecian antiquities, seems admirably

1 Griffith's edition of Cuvier's Animal Kingdom.

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RECEIVED TRADITION.

to have concluded that traditionary evidence, even amongst the pagans, could ascend only to a certain point, let the body of the earth, or the planet itself in short, be as old as it may.

"Thus, not only should we not be surprised to find, even in ancient times, many doubts, and contradictions respecting the Epochs of Cecrops, Deucalion, Cadmus, and Danaus; and not only would it be childish to attach the smallest importance to any opinion whatever, regarding the precise dates of Inachus or Ogyges; but if any thing ought to surprise us, it is this, that an infinitely more remote antiquity had not been assigned to those personages.. It is impossible that there has not been in this case some effect of the influence of received tradition, from which the inventors of fables were not able to free themselves'.'

1 Theory of the Earth. The time of Inachus has been variously represented to be about eighteen centuries before Christ, and that of Ogyges some years after.

PART IV.

THE Baron Cuvier, in the section of his theory of the earth, which professes to give an account of preceding systems of geology, observes that "during a long time, two events or epochs only, the creation and the deluge, were admitted as comprehending the changes which have been operated upon the globe; and all the efforts of geology were directed to account for the present existing state of things, by imagining a certain original state, afterwards modified by the deluge, of which also, as to its causes, its operations, and its effects, each entertained his own theory."

This is all exceedingly true; nor would it be difficult to enumerate and classify the several investigations, to which the efforts of geology have subsequently been applied, in order to account for (if possible) the changes which "have been operated upon the globe." We know how much light has been supposed to have been thrown upon the subject of late years, by the Baron's own pursuit of the science of comparative anatomy; if light indeed, it may be called, for except as a fresh proof that the sea has changed its bed, I do not know that it has yet done much more than enable us to detect the existence, and destruction of many strange animals, in very strange places, and under very strange cir