Such assumption, however, is not to be conceded without question. Even if the growth of peat by vegetable deposit, under the present conditions of the surrounding country, is as slow as alleged, what does this prove as to its rate at a former period, when the land was covered with forests and dense undergrowths, and when, being so covered, its climatal conditions probably differed widely from those of the present time? So with the formation of the valley; what evidence is there that it was ever caused by the action of running water at all, and not by those great subterranean powers to which both mountain ranges and valleys so generally owe their origin, becoming the bed of the Somme, not because excavated by it, but because previously existing, and therefore determining the direction of the flow of the surface waters of that district? But without multiplying these inquiries, which so readily suggest themselves even to persons unskilled in geological speculations, let us listen to some who are worthy to speak authoritatively on the subject.

Says the late President Hitchcock,* "The increase of peat varies so much, under different circumstances, that it is of no use to attempt to ascertain its rate of growth. On the continent of Europe it is stated to have gained seven feet in thirty

* Elem. Geology, p. 222.

years. Macculloch's Sys. of Geology, vol. ii. P. 344."

Professor J. Duns, of New College, Edinburgh, relates, on the authority of Captain F. L. N. Thomas, that in the Hebrides peat has accumulated over some of the ancient pagan monuments to the depth of six feet in 1000 years.

*

As to the origin of the Somme valley, Professor Duns says, "Taking the depths of the valley as given above, are we warranted to conclude that the Somme once ran at the level of the higher gravels, and that it has cut a path for itself to its present depths? I believe that other and more powerful agencies than the erosive power of running water have been at work in that part of France. Yet this question might be answered in the affirmative, and its value, as favorable to Sir Charles Lyell's views of the antiquity of man, destroyed by an appeal to facts for whose truth he himself is the voucher." Professor D. then refers to the facts adduced in Lyell's "Principles of Geology," in regard to the erosive power of running water, among which is the following:

"At the western base of Ætna, a current of lava, descending from near the summit of the great volcano, has flowed to the distance of five or six miles, and then reached

* Science and Christian Thought, p. 249.

the alluvial plain of the Simeto, the largest of the Sicilian rivers, which skirts the base of Ætna, and falls into the sea a few miles south of Catania. The lava entered the river about three miles above the town of Adano, and not only occupied its channel for some distance, but, crossing to the opposite side of the valley, accumulated there in a rocky mass. Gemmellaro gives the year 1603 as the date of the eruption. . . . In the course, therefore, of about two centuries, the Simeto has eroded a passage from fifty to several hundred feet wide, and in some parts from forty to fifty feet deep. The portion of lava cut through is in no part porous or scoriaceous, but consists of a homogeneous mass of hard blue rock, somewhat inferior in weight to ordinary basalt, and containing crystals of olivine and glassy felspar. The general declivity of this part of the bed of the Simeto is not considerable. . The external forms of the hard blue lava are as massive as any of the most ancient trap rocks of Scotland.”

"From this point of view, then,” remarks Professor Duns, "the question comes to be a very simple one. If the Simeto has in two hundred years cut a ravine, through hard volcanic rock, a hundred feet wide and fifty feet deep, how long would the Sonme require to excavate its present valley in the soft chalk rocks over which it runs? we have not only hundreds, but thousands, of years at our disposal. It is, however, most likely that the explanation of the formation of the Somme val

In the latter case,

ley is to be found in connection with other natural forces."

Professor Duns quotes also from a paper by Sir Roderick Murchison, "On the Distribution of the Flint Drifts of the South-east of England," from which I take the following paragraphs:

"No analogy of tidal or fluviatile action can explain either the condition or position of the debris and unrolled flints and bones. On the contrary, by referring their distribution to those great oscillations and ruptures by which the earth's surface has been so powerfully affected in former times, we may well imagine how the large area under consideration was suddenly broken up and submerged. This hypothesis seems to me to be an appeal to a vera causa commensurate with the results. As respects the south-east of England,† the operations must have been modern, in a geological sense.

"Alluding to geologists who rank all ancient geological phenomena in the category of existing causation,' Sir R. Murchison says, 'The endeavor to refer all former fractures of the strata, as well as their overthrow on a great scale, as in the Aips, to causes of no greater intensity of action than those which now prevail, is in opposition to the observations I have made in every mountain chain as well as in the modest cliffs of Brighton and Dover.' The uniformitarian theory, so strongly condemned here, is that

Science and Christian Thought, p. 229.

† The same remark must apply to the opposite coast of France, separated from it only by the Straits of Dover.

which Sir Charles Lyell has applied throughout his dis cussions on this question. He has assigned to Norway 'a mean rate of continuous vertical elevation of two and a half feet in a century,' and assumed this as the standard rate of elevation in most other quarters. But if anything is sure in physical geology, the variable intensity of these agencies is. Indeed, this theory of uniform intensity is contradicted at every point. Many circumstances, for example, influence the rate at which mud is deposited in lakes, in river-courses, and in estuaries. The growth of peat depends much on climatal conditions, which vary in different degrees of latitude. Then what so capricious and so variable in its intensity as the force which makes itself known in the rocking earthquake, or as that which finds expression in the volcanic eruption? Even the introduction and disappearance of zoological species, of which so much has recently been made, not only refuse to give that testimony in favor of uniformitarian views, so anxiously sought from them, but bear witness to facts of an entirely different kind. When, then, we sum up the strongest points in favor of an antiquity for man far more remote than is assigned to him in the Word of God, I think the conclusion is warranted, if not irresistible, that they signally fail to cast distrust on the biblical historical record." *

Professor Wilson, in his " Pre-historic Man" (vol. i. p. 50), after quoting Sir Charles Lyell on the flint implements and weapons at Abbeville and Amiens, adds,

*Science and Christian Thought, pp. 276, seq.