Whatever, therefore, Colonel Macdonell may have written will remain over and above in illustration of the tradition. But whether on the lines of Hebrew or primeval tradition, these views will inevitably run counter to the mythological theories now in the ascendant. These views, indeed, have been so long relegated to darkness, and perhaps appropriately, on account of their opposition to the prevalent solar theories, "flouted like owls and bats" whenever they have ventured into the daylight, that it will be with something amounting to absolute astonishment that the learned will hear that there are people who still entertain them: "itaque ea nolui scribere, quæ nec indocti intelligere possent, nec docti legere curarent" (Cic. Acad. Quæs., 1. i. § 2). I can sincerely say, however, that although my theories place me in a position of antagonism to modern science, yet that I have written in no spirit of hostility to science or the cause of science. I have throughout excluded the geological argument, for the first and sufficient reason that I am not a geologist; and secondly, by the same right and title, that geologists, _e.g._ Sir C. Lyell, in his "Antiquity of Man," ignores the arguments and facts to which I have directed special attention. Nevertheless, I find that competent witnesses have come to conclusions not materially different from those which have been arrived at, on the ground of history, within their own department of geology. I have more especially in my mind the following passage from a series of papers, "On Some Evidences of the Antiquity of Man," by the Rev. A. Weld, in the _Month_ (1871), written with full knowledge and in a spirit of careful and fair appreciation of the evidence. He says:-- "These evidences, such as they are, are fully treated in the work of Sir C. Lyell, entitled 'Antiquity of Man,' which exhausted the whole question as it stood, when the last edition was published in the year 1863. It is worthy of note that though the conclusion at which the geologist arrives is hesitating and suggestive, rather than decisive, and though nothing of importance, as far as we are aware, has been added to the geological aspect of the question since that time--except that the reality of the discovery of human remains has been verified, and many additional discoveries of a similar character have been made--_still the opinion_, which was _then new and startling, has gradually gained ground_, until we find writers assuming as a thing that needs no further proof, that the period of man's habitation on the earth is to be reckoned in tens of thousands of years."--_The Month_ (May and June 1871), p. 437. Among various works, bearing on matters contained in these pages, which have come to hand during the course of publication, I may mention-- "The Mythology of the Aryan Nations," by the Rev. G. W. Cox, referred to in notes at pp. 158, 165, 396. The third edition of Sir John Lubbock's "Pre-historic Times."