This truth is so patent and plain that it has received the unqualified indorsement of the most learned scholars. Distinguished divines have been amongst its able expounders, and instead of being in opposition to the Bible, as already stated, the earnest reader finds in the periods of the geologists unexpected confirmation of its truths. The evidence of an extended past for man is not, however, wholly of a geological nature, though these have been the ones principally relied on. The archæologist to-day summons to his aid the science of language, studies into the origin of civilization and the comparison of the different races of men, and derives from each and all of these concurrent testimony as to a vast, shadowy, and profound antiquity for man, one stretching way beyond the dawn of history, far into the very night of time. As we have now spent some time in tracing out the culture of these early ages, it may be well to see if there are any means at our command to determine the absolute chronology of the various ages. At the very outset of our inquiry, we shall perceive that we have no such class of facts as guided our investigations into the age of the Paleolithic remains. We have but to recall the situation in which the implements of that age were found, always under such circumstances, that we see at once that a great lapse of time has passed since they became imbedded where found, and then the bones of the various extinct animals, found so associated with the implements, that we are justified, even compelled, to admit they occupied the same section of country, and then, from a variety of causes, we are satisfied that they occupied Europe at the close of the Glacial Age, if not for long ages before. All this gave us a point of departure, and we have showed with what care scholars have studied all questions relating to the date of the Glacial Age. But aside from the fact that geology points out that a long time went by after the close of the Glacial Age before Neolithic man arrived on the scene, we are largely deprived of its aid in our investigations; for all the various implements and specimens of the household industries, from which we derive our knowledge of these latter ages, are found only in surface deposits; that is, in the modern alluvia and silt of river bottoms, in superficial deposits, in caves, and in peat-bogs; and even in other instances where apparently deeply buried, as in the submerged forest deposits of the British coasts, we know that, geologically speaking, their age is recent.