e that the aborigines understood, to that extent, the
art of navigation. So in science, one fossil of a different species from
any found heretofore in a certain deposit is sufficient to add another
to the forms of life represented by that deposit. One fossil found lower
in the geological scale than life was supposed to have begun on this
planet, is sufficient to prove that it had a still earlier beginning. So
with regard to contemporary forms of life, one fact may be sufficient to
warrant or compel a conclusion. Hugh Miller cites the instance of fossil
dung being found as proving to the anti-geologists that these fossils
were once real living creatures, and not mere freaks of nature. The
instance might not be thought conclusive, for if the Author of nature
saw fit to amuse himself by making the semblances of huge iguanodons,
elephants, and hippopotami, in the solid rocks, it might readily be
supposed that He would extend His amusement to the making of fossil
dung.[2] But now, if in the fossil entrails of the cave hyena the bones
of a hare should be found, it would prove conclusively to any but an
anti-geologist, that the hare lived contemporaneously with the hyena.

These remarks are not thrown in by way of apology for the paucity of
facts adduced by Sir Charles Lyell to prove the antiquity of man, but
merely to illustrate the force which it is possible, in certain
circumstances, for a single fact to have. Thus, for instance, the Scotch
fir is not now, nor ever has been in historic times, a native of the
Danish isles, yet it has been indigenous there in the human period, for
Steenstrup has taken out with his own hands a flint implement from
beneath one the buried trunks of that species in the Danish peat bogs.
Again, if an implement of human workmanship is found in close proximity
to the leg of a bear, or the horn of a reindeer, of extinct species, in
an ancient cavern, and all covered by a floor of stalagmite, we see not
how the conclusion is to be avoided that they were introduced into the
cave before the stalagmite was formed; and in that case the inference
that they were contemporaneous, or nearly so, may well be left to take
care of itself. The attempt has been made to treat with levity the whole
subject of the antiquity of man because of the numerical meagreness of
the facts adduced in support of it. But as to this, it need only be
observed that as a new theme for investigation, its facts must
necessarily be meagre