The central Presbyterian. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1856-1908, 1880-12-15
DZSA GREEMENT OF THE
DOCTORS

DOCTORS.
One of the most desperate efforts of a
certain class of scientists within the past
twenty years has been directed towards
discrediting the Biblical account of the
creation of man, as well as the received
Biblical chronology in connection with
that event. Another and more con-
scientious class of scientific men have
without due consideration given in to
these views. Two books have recently
appeared on this subject from eminent
men of science, and it is remarkable that
while both writers believe in the evolu-
ton and the great antiquity of the human
race, the two works mutually destroy
each other, and constitute complete an
swer the one to the other. The books
we refer to are Prof Boyd Dawkins
work on Early Nan IN Britain and Prof
Alexander Winchell's work entitled Pre-
adnnl1teS.
In order that our readers may all un-
derstand the question at issue, we will
state that the geological eras for our pre-
sent purposes, may be divided into the
Primary, Secondary, Tertiary, and Qua
ternary (the last including the present
epoch) Tits not claimed by any anthro-
pologist that man appeared earlier than
the Tertiary era. This Tertiary era is
subdivided into the Eocene, Miocene,
and Pliocene periods, and the Quarter
nary includes the Glacial, and the Recent
or Present period.
Now Prof. Dawkins (perhaps the most
learned man on this subject in Europe)
in the volume before us rejects the evil
dences brought forward by the French
and Italian biologists and psychologists
for tertiary man, and fixes the time of his
appearance on earth near the close of
the glacial epoch. But Prof. Winchell
(who is professor of geology and paloeon-
tology in the University of Michigan,
In his very learned work, while admitting
the conclusive character of the evidence
for the existence of man at thissdate, as
derived from his traces found in the river
gravels and caves, asserts that the date
IS not q remote, but a comparatively re-
cent one. Prof. Dawkins' whole argu-
ment is based on these caves and river
gravels, in which have been found the
famous flint implements in association
with the bones Of the mammoth, the ex-
tinct tichorine rhinoceros, the cave-lion.
the cave-bear, the reindeer, etc. Great
changes in the physical geography of
Europe, In the climate and in the fauna,
of that continent, he says, have occurred
since " the artisans of the drift" lived in !
the Somme Valley and on the Mendip
Hills, and these, he contends, imply the
lapse of a vast period of time. Sir
Charles Lyell and Sir John Lubbock
took the same view in their works on
this subject, but neither Of them had given
the thorough study to prehistoric arch
zoology which Mr. Dawkins has done.
Prof. Winchell, however, comes for
ward now, and, as a geologst, informs us
that these appearances Of antiquity are
wholly illusory, and that neither the
physical changes in the level Of the con-
tinents, nor the disappearance of the great
extinct animals, nor the change in the
climate, need involve the lapse Of more
than few thousand years
Here is what Prof. Winchell has to
say on the antiquity of "pal@oithic" man
the man Of the First Stone Age:
" When it was fully settled that men
had occupied Europe in remote prehis-
toric times before the last great revolu-