According to Woodward, over two thousand grinders were dredged up by the fishermen of Happisburgh in the space of thirteen years; and other localities in and about England are also noted. – Dana’s Manual of Geology, p. 564.

Lyell, Antiquity of Man, p. 185, 2nd edit., 1863.

Fr. μάχαιρα “a sword,” and ὀδούς “a tooth.”

From μαστός “a teat,” and ὀδούς “a tooth.”

Palæontology, R. Owen. Edinburgh, 1860.

The British Lion, W. Boyd Dawkins, Contemporary Review, 1882.

The Moa was associated with other species also nearly or totally extinct: some belonging to the same genus, others to those of Papteryx, of Nestor, and of Notornis. One survivor of the latter was obtained by Mr. Gideon Mantell, and described by my father, Mr. John Gould, in 1850. I believe the Nestor is still, rarely, met with. Mr. Mantell is of opinion that the Moa and his congeners continued in existence long after the advent of the aboriginal Maori. Mr. Mantell discovered a gigantic fossil egg, presumably that of the Moa.

A. E. Nordenskjöld, The Voyage of the ‘Vega,’ vol. i. p. 272, et seq. London, 1881.

Pliny, Nat. Hist., Bk. x., chap. xvii., and Bk. xxx., chap. liii.

The Romance of Natural History, by P. H. Gosse, 2nd Series, London 1875.

Pop. Sci. Monthly, October 1878.

Excelsior, vol. iii. London, 1855.

The Chinese Classics, vol. iii. p. 1, by James Legge, B.D.

Inaugural Address by President, T. W. Kingsmill, North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1877.

Chabas, Études sur l’Antiquité Historique, d’après les sources Égyptiennes.

Subsequently to 1874.

O. F. von Mollendorf, Journal of North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, New Series, No. 2, and T. W. Kingsmill, “The Border Lands of Geology and History,” Journal of North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1877.

“Intercourse of China with Eastern Turkestan and the adjacent country in the second century B.C.,” T. W. Kingsmill, Journal of North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, New Series, No. 14.

The Natural History of Pliny. Translated by J. Bostock and H. T. Biley, 6 vols. Bohn, London, 1857.

Æliani de Natura Animalium, F. Jacobs. Jenæ, 1832.

Géographie d’Edrisi, traduite de l’Arabe en Français, P. Amédée Jaubert, 2 vols. Paris, 1836.

Phil. Trans., vol. cxlix. p. 43, 1859; vol. clxxi. p. 1,037, 1880; vol. clxxii. p. 547, 1881.

Description of some New Species and Genera of Reptiles from Western Australia, discovered by John Gould, Esq., Annals and Magazine of Natural History, vol. vii. p. 88, 1841.

“We shall, I think, eventually more fully recognise that, as is the case with the periods of the day, each of the larger geological divisions follows the other, without any actual break or boundary; and that the minor subdivisions are like the hours on the clock, useful and conventional rather than absolutely fixed by any general cause in Nature.” – Annual Address, President of Geological Society, 1875.

“With regard to stratigraphical geology, the main foundations are already laid, and a great part of the details filled in. The tendency of modern discoveries has already been, and will probably still be, to fill up those breaks, which, according to the view of many, though by no means all geologists, are so frequently assumed to exist between different geological periods and to bring about a more full recognition of the continuity of geological time. As knowledge increases, it will, I think, become more and more apparent that all existing divisions of time are to a considerable extent local and arbitrary. But, even when this is fully recognised, it will still be found desirable to retain them, if only for the sake of convenience and approximate precision.” – Annual Address, President of Geological Society, 1876.

“It was not until January 1832, that the second volume of the Principles was published, when it was received with as much favour as the first had been. It related more especially to the changes in the organic world, while the former volume had treated mainly of the inorganic forces of nature. Singularly enough, some of the points which were seized on by his great fellow-labourer Murchison for his presidential address to this Society in 1832, as subjects for felicitation, are precisely those which the candid mind of Lyell, ever ready to attach the full value to discoveries or arguments from time to time brought forward, even when in opposition to his own views, ultimately found reason to modify. We can never, I think, more highly appreciate Sir Charles Lyell’s freshness of mind, his candour and love of truth, than when we compare certain portions of the first edition of the Principles with those which occupy the same place in the last, and trace the manner in which his judicial intellect was eventually led to conclusions diametrically opposed to those which he originally held. To those acquainted only with the latest editions of the Principles, and with his Antiquity of Man, it may sound almost ironical in Murchison to have written, ‘I cannot avoid noticing the clear and impartial manner in which the untenable parts of the dogmas concerning the alteration and transmutation of species and genera are refuted, and how satisfactorily the author confirms the great truth of the recent appearance of man upon our planet.’

“By the work (Principles of Geology, vol. iii.), as a whole, was dealt the most telling blow that had ever fallen upon those to whom it appears ‘more philosophical to speculate on the possibilities of the past than patiently to explore the realities of the present,’ while the earnest and careful endeavour to reconcile the former indications of change with the evidence of gradual mutation now in progress, or which may be in progress, received its greatest encouragement. The doctrines which Hutton and Playfair had held and taught assumed new and more vigorous life as better principles were explained by their eminent successor, and were supported by arguments which, as a whole, were incontrovertible.” – Annual Address, President of Geological Society, 1876.

“But, as Sir Roderick Murchison has long ago proved, there are parts of the record which are singularly complete, and in those parts we have the proof of creation without any indication of development. The Silurian rocks, as regards oceanic life, are perfect and abundant in the forms they have preserved. Yet there are no fish. The Devonian age followed tranquilly and without a break, and in the Devonian sea, suddenly, fish appear, appear in shoals, and in form of the highest and most perfect type.” – The Duke of Argyll, Primeval Man, p. 45, London, 1869.

T. Mellard Reade, “Limestone as an Index of Geological Time,” Proceedings, Royal Society, London, vol. xxviii., p. 281.

Scientific American, Supplement, February 1881.

Proceedings, Royal Society, vol. xv. No. 82, 1866.

Athenæum, August 25, 1860, &c.

The mass of astronomers, however, deny that this is possible to any very great extent.

James Croll, F.R.S., &c., Climate and Time in their Geological Relations.

Figs. 19 and 21 are taken, by permission of Edmund Christy, Esq., from Reliquiæ Aquitanicæ, &c., London, 1875.

In some cases as much as 150 feet.

“Starting from the opinion generally accepted among geologists, that man was on the earth at the close of the Glacial epoch, Professor B. F. Mudge adduces evidence to prove that the antiquity of man cannot be less than 200,000 years.

“His argument, as given in the Kansas City Review of Science, is about as follows: —

“After the Glacial epoch, geologists fix three distinct epochs, the Champlain, the Terrace, and the Delta, all supposed to be of nearly equal lengths.

“Now we have in the delta of the Mississippi a means of measuring the duration of the third of these epochs.

“For a distance of about two hundred miles of this delta are seen forest growths of large trees, one after the other, with interspaces of sand. There are ten of these distinct forest growths, which have begun and ended one after the other. The trees are the bald cypress (Taxodium) of the Southern States, and some of them were over twenty-five feet in diameter. One contained over five thousand seven hundred annual rings. In some instances these huge trees have grown over the stumps of others equally large, and such instances occur in all, or nearly all, of the ten forest beds. This gives to each forest a period of 10,000 years.

“Ten such periods give 100,000 years, to say nothing of the time covered by the interval between the ending of one forest and the beginning of another, an interval which in most cases was considerable.

“‘Such evidence,’ writes Professor Mudge, ‘would be received in any court of law as sound and satisfactory. We do not see how such proof is to be discarded when applied to the antiquity of our race.

“‘There is satisfactory evidence that man lived in the Champlain epoch. But the Terrace epoch, or the greater part of it, intervenes between the Champlain and the Delta epochs, thus adding to my 100,000 years.

“‘If only as much time is given to both those epochs as to the Delta period, 200,000 years is the total result.’” —Popular Science Monthly, No. 91, vol. xvi. No. 1, p. 140, November 1878.

Such as the destruction of the Alexandrine Library on three distinct occasions, (1) upon the conquest of Alexandria by Julius Cæsar, B.C. 48; (2) in A.D. 390; and, (3) by Amrou, the general of the Caliph Omar, in 640, who ordered it to be burnt, and so supplied the baths with fuel for six months. Again, the destruction of all Chinese books by order of Tsin Shi Hwang-ti, the founder of the Imperial branch of the Tsin dynasty, and the first Emperor of United China; the only exceptions allowed being those relating to medicine, divination, and husbandry. This took place in the year 213 B.C.

The Chinese have used composite blocks (wood engraved blocks with many characters, analogous to our stereotype plates) from an early period. May not the brick-clay tablets preserved in the Imperial Library at Babylon have been used for striking off impressions on some plastic material, just as rubbings may be taken from the stone drums in China: may not the cylinders with inscribed characters have been used in some way or other as printing-rollers for propagating knowledge or proclamations?

As, for example, the old canal from the Nile to the Red Sea, in reference to which Herodotus says (Euterpe, 158), “Neco was the son of Psammitichus, and became King of Egypt: he first set about the canal that leads to the Red Sea, which Darius the Persian afterwards completed. Its length is a voyage of four days, and in width it was dug so that two triremes might sail rowed abreast. The water is drawn into it from the Nile, and it enters it a little above the city Bubastis, passes near the Arabian city Patumos, and reaches to the Red Sea.” In the digging of which one hundred and twenty thousand Egyptians perished in the reign of Neco.

The co-called tanks at Aden, reservoirs constructed one below the other, in a gorge near the cantonments, are as perfect now as they were when they left the hand of the contractor or royal engineer in the time of Moses.

In the 29th year of the Emperor Kwei [B.C. 1559] they chiselled through mountains and tunnelled hills, according to the Bamboo Books.

An interesting line of investigation might be opened up as to the origin of inventions and the date of their migrations. The Chinese claim the priority of many discoveries, such as chess, printing, issue of bank-notes, sinking of artesian wells, gunpowder, suspension bridges, the mariner’s compass, &c. &c. I extract two remarkable wood-cuts from the San Li T’u, one appended here showing the origin of our college cap; the other, in the chapter on the Unicorn, appearing to illustrate the fable of the Sphynx.

Fig. 22. – Royal Diademof the Chen Dynasty.

(From the San Li T’u.)

I also give a series of engravings, reduced facsimiles of those contained in a celebrated Chinese work on antiquities, showing the gradual evolution of the so-called Grecian pattern or scroll ornamentation, and origination of some of the Greek forms of tripods.

“The old Troglodytes, pile villagers, and bog people, prove to be quite a respectable society. They have heads so large that many a living person would be only too happy to possess such.” – A. Mitchell, The Past in the Present, Edinburgh, 1880.

I have given in the annexed plates a few examples of the early hieroglyphics on which the modern Chinese system of writing is based, selected from a limited number collected by the early Jesuit fathers in China, and contained in the Mémoirs concernant l’Histoire, &c. des Chinois, par les Missionaires de Pekin, vol. i., Paris, 1776. The modern Chinese characters conveying the same idea are attached, and their derivation from the pictorial hieroglyphics, by modification or contraction, is in nearly all cases obvious.

“The Porcelain Tower of Nankin, once one of the seven wonders of the world, can now only be found piecemeal in walls of peasants’ huts.” – Gutzlaff, Hist. China, vol. i. p. 372.

The outer casing of the pyramid of Cheops, which Herodotus (Euterpe, 125) states to have still exhibited in his time an inscription, telling how much was expended (one thousand six hundred talents of silver) in radishes, onions, and garlic for the workmen, has entirely disappeared; as also, almost completely, the marble casing of the adjacent pyramid of Sen-Saophis. According to tradition the missing marbles in each instance were taken to build palaces with in Cairo.

“The work of destruction was carried on methodically. From the Caspian Sea to the Indus, the Mongols ruined, within four years, more than four centuries of continuous labour have since restored. The most flourishing cities became a mass of ruins: Samarkand, Bokhara, Nizabour, Balkh, and Kandahar shared in the same destruction.” – Gutzlaff, Hist. China, vol. i. p. 358.

“An army of 700,000 Mongols met half the number of Mahommedans.” —Ibid. p. 357.

Those interested in the subject may read with great advantage the section on dynamical geology in Dana’s valuable manual. He points out the large amount of wear accomplished by wind carrying sand in arid regions, by seeds falling in some crevice, and bursting rocks open through the action of the roots developed from their sprouting, to say nothing of the more ordinarily recognized destructive agencies of frost and rain, carbonic acid resulting from vegetable decomposition, &c.

Darwin, in Vegetable Mould and Earth-worms, has shown that earthworms play a considerable part in burying old buildings, even to a depth of several feet.

Rev. T. K. Cheyne, Article “Deluge,” Encyclopædia Britannica, 1877. François Lenormant, “The Deluge, its Traditions in Ancient Histories,” Contemporary Review, Nov., 1879.

Bunsen estimates that 20,000 years were requisite for the formation of the Chinese language. This, however, is not conceded by other philologists.

Rawlinson quotes the African type on the Egyptian sculptures as being identical with that of the negro of the present day.

“While the tradition of the Deluge holds so considerable a place in the legendary memories of all branches of the Aryan race, the monuments and original texts of Egypt, with their many cosmogenic speculations, have not afforded one, even distant, allusion to this cataclysm. When the Greeks told the Egyptian priests of the Deluge of Deucalion, their reply was that they had been preserved from it as well as from the conflagration produced by Phaeton; they even added that the Hellenes were childish in attaching so much importance to that event, as there had been several local catastrophes resembling it.” – Lenormant, Contemporary Review, November 1879.

100

François Lenormant, “The Deluge; its Traditions in Ancient Histories,” Contemporary Review, vol. xxxvi. p. 465.

101

Here several verses are wanting.

102

“The water of the twilight at break of day,” one of the personifications of rain.

103

The god of thunder.

104

The god of war and death.

105

The Chaldæo-Assyrian Hercules.

106

The superior heaven of the fixed stars.

107

Vases of the measure called in Hebrew Seäh. This relates to a detail of the ritualistic prescriptions for sacrifice.

108

These metaphorical expressions appear to designate the rainbow.

109

The god of epidemics.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента

Купить и скачать всю книгу

<1...7 8 9

На страницу:

Перейти

9 из 9