from the fact that a keen
controversy has arisen on the subject of man's antiquity, that such
fragments of man himself or of his works as manifest great age have been
pressed to serve as weapons in the fray,--that, occurring always in
superficial and local deposits, their true era may be greatly antedated,
under the influence of prejudice, by men who have no design wilfully to
deceive,--and that while, respecting the older formations, with their
abundant organisms, the conclusions of any one geologist may be tested
by all the others, the geologist who once in a lifetime picks up in a
stratified sand or clay a stone arrow-head or a human bone, finds that
the data on which he founds his conclusions may be received or rejected
by his contemporaries, but not re-examined. It may be safely stated,
however, that that ancient record in which man is represented as the
lastborn of creation, is opposed by no geologic fact; and that if,
according to Chalmers, "the Mosaic writings do not fix the antiquity of
the globe," they at least _do_ fix--making allowance, of course, for the
varying estimates of the chronologer--"the antiquity of the human
species." The great column of being, with its base set in the sea, and
inscribed, like some old triumphal pillar, with many a strange form,--at
once hieroglyphic and figure,--bears, as the ornately sculptured
capital, which imparts beauty and finish to the whole, reasoning,
responsible man. There is surely a very wonderful harmony manifested in
the proportions of that nice sequence in which the invertebrates--the
fishes, the reptiles, the birds, the marsupials, the placental mammals,
and, last of all, man himself--are so exquisitely arranged. It reminds
us of the fine figure employed by Dryden in his first Ode for St.
Cecilia's Day,--a figure which, viewed in the light cast on it by the
modern science of Palaeontology, stands out in bolder relief than that in
which it could have appeared to the poet himself:--

"From harmony, from heavenly harmony,
This universal frame began;
From harmony to harmony,
Through all the compass of the notes it ran,
The _diapason_ closing full in man."

[Illustration: Fig. 77.

ASAPHUS CAUDATUS.

(_Silurian._)]

[Illustration: Fig. 78.

ORTHOCERAS LATERALE.

(_Mountain Limestone._)]

[Illustration: Fig. 79.

SPIRIGERINA RETICULARIS.

(_Old Red Sandstone._)]

[Illustration: Fig. 80.

A. MARGARITATUS.

(_Lias._)]

[Illustration: Fig. 81.