hat almost simultaneously with the
appearance of Bunsen's scheme a similiar view was attempted to be
maintained on geological grounds. In a series of borings in the delta of
the Nile, undertaken by Mr. Horner, there was found a piece of pottery
at a depth which appeared to indicate an antiquity of 13,371 years. But
the basis of the calculation is the rate of deposit (3-1/2 inches per
century) calculated for the ground around the statue of Rameses II. at
Memphis, dated at 1361 B.C.; and Mr. Sharpe has objected that no mud
could have been deposited around that statue from its erection until the
destruction of Memphis, perhaps 800 years B.C. Farther, we have to take
into account the natural or artificial changes of the river's bed, which
in this very place is said to have been diverted from its course by
Menes, and which near Cairo is now nearly a mile from its former site.
The liability to error and fraud in boring operations is also very well
known. It has farther been suggested that the deep cracks which form in
the soil of Egypt, and the sinking of wells in ancient times, are other
probable causes of error; and it is stated that pieces of burnt brick,
which was not in use in Egypt until the Roman times, have been found at
even greater depths than the pottery referred to by Mr. Horner. This
discovery, at first sight so startling, and vouched for by a geologist
of unquestioned honor and ability, is thus open to the same doubts with
the Guadaloupe skeletons, the human bones in ossiferous caverns, and
that found in the mud of the Mississippi; all of which have, on
examination, proved of no value as proofs of the geological antiquity of
man.]

[Footnote 115: 5004 B.C.]

[Footnote 116: Perhaps the earliest certain date in Egyptian history is
that of Thothmes III. of the eighteenth dynasty, ascertained by Birch on
astronomical evidence as about 1445 B.C. (about 1600, Manetho); and it
seems nearly certain that before the eighteenth dynasty, of which this
king was the fifth sovereign, there was no settled general government
over all Egypt.]

[Footnote 117: The Egyptians seem, like our modern cattle-breeders, to
have taken pride in the initiation and preservation of varieties. Their
sacred bull, Apis, was required to represent one of the varieties of the
ox; and one can scarcely avoid believing that some of their deified
ancestors must have earned their celebrity as tamers or breeders of
animals. At a later period, the experi