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, as must be the facts of any science in its inchoate condition, and that they are steadily growing in volume, so that it is not safe to venture a final verdict against it on that score. The facts in support of the globular form of the earth, or the Copernican theory of the heavens, or the great age of the earth, were at one time meagre--they are not so now. Sir Charles Lyell is a pioneer explorer in a new and mysterious realm: the time may come when, amid the abundance of the treasure gathered from it, the scanty hoard which he opens to his reader may seem meagre enough. Nevertheless, Sir Charles Lyell is fully a believer in the doctrine of the high antiquity of man. His book is not merely a debating-club discussion of the pros and cons, the probabilities for and against the doctrine, but rather the earnest pleading of the advocate fully persuaded that the truth is on his side. Not that it displays any forensic heat;--it is calm, cautious, dispassionate; but it has the air of one governed by conviction, and he often assumes the entire truth of his conclusions with the quiet _nonchalance_ of a man seemingly unconscious that what he regards as matters of established certainty will be viewed by the great majority of his fellow beings as startling novelties.