Part 23 (2/2)

[Footnote 125: I suggested these terms in my lectures published under the t.i.tle ”Nature and the Bible,” 1875.]

[Footnote 126: Since these words were written I have read the remarkable book of Edkins on the Chinese language, which supplies much additional information.]

[Footnote 127: Donaldson has pointed out (British a.s.sociation Proceedings, 1851) links of connection between the Slavonian or Sarmatian tongues and the Semitic languages, which in like manner indicate the primitive union of the two great branches of languages.]

[Footnote 128: ”Man and his Migrations.” See also ”Descriptive Ethnology,” where the Semitic affinities are very strongly brought out.]

[Footnote 129: I can scarcely except such terms as ”j.a.petic” and ”j.a.petidae,” for Iapetus can hardly be any thing else than a traditional name borrowed from Semitic ethnology, or handed down from the j.a.phetic progenitors of the Greeks.]

[Footnote 130: See art. ”Philology,” Encyc. Brit.]

[Footnote 131: Grammatical structure is no doubt more permanent than vocabulary, yet we find great changes in the latter, both in tracing cognate languages from one region to another, and from period to period.

The Indo-Germanic languages in Europe furnish enough of familiar instances.]

[Footnote 132: It is fair, however, to observe that the Bible refers the first great divergence of language to a divine intervention at the Tower of Babel. The precise nature of this we do not know; but it would tend to diminish the time required.]

[Footnote 133: Lecture in the Royal Inst.i.tution, March 24, 1876.]

[Footnote 134: ”Antiquity of Man,” 4th ed.]

[Footnote 135: Southall, _Op. cit._]

[Footnote 136: The Mentone skeleton described by Dr. Riviere gives evidence of these facts.]

[Footnote 137: Mr. Pengelly declines to admit this; but a.s.signs no cause for the breaking up of portions of the old floor, which he merely refers in general terms to ”natural causes.”]

[Footnote 138: This whole subject of supposed preglacial or interglacial men is still in great confusion and uncertainty, and is complicated with questions, still debated, as to the ages of the supposed glacial and postglacial deposits.]

[Footnote 139: _Quarterly Journal of Science_, April, 1875.]

[Footnote 140: Lyell's ”Manual of Elementary Geology.”]

[Footnote 141: For a full discussion of this subject, see the ”Story of the Earth and Man.”]

[Footnote 142: Such a table, with an admirable exposition of the entire succession, as at present known, is given in the Appendix to Lyell's ”Students' Manual of Geology.”]

[Footnote 143: Lyell, basing his calculations on the surveys of Messrs.

Humphreys and Abbott, but others give very different estimates.]

[Footnote 144: A perfectly parallel example is that of the growth of the peninsula of Florida in the modern period, by the same processes now adding to its sh.o.r.es; and this has afforded to Professor Aga.s.siz a still more extended measure of the Post-tertiary period.]

[Footnote 145: Reade, of Liverpool, has recently given a much slower rate--one foot in 13,000 years--as a result of recent English surveys; but I have not seen his precise data, and the result certainly differs from those of all other observations.]

[Footnote 146: I am quite aware that it may be objected to all this that it is based on merely negative evidence; but this is not strictly the case. There are positive indications of these truths. For example, in the Mesozoic epoch the lacertian reptiles presented huge elephantine carnivorous and herbivorous species--the Megalosaurus, Iguanodon, etc.; flying species, with hollow bones and ample wings--the Pterodactyles; and aquatic whale-like species--Pliosaurus, Ichthyosaurus, etc. These creatures actually filled the offices now occupied by the mammals; and, though lacertian in their affinities, they must have had circulatory, respiratory, and nervous systems far in advance of any modern reptiles even of the order of Loricates.]

[Footnote 147: ”Story of the Earth”--concluding chapters.]

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