very moderate figures. Other and far more definite conditions of calculation are now relied upon.

Among the better and more reliable data is the gorge of Niagara.* The preglacial outlet, which was filled during the prevalence of the ice-period, is no part of the present outlet of Lake Eric. After the filling-up process it was necessary for the waters of Lake Erie to seek another outlet. Niagara River was the result. At Queenston a thick outcrop of limestone comes to the surface above the level of Lake Ontario about three hundred feet. The beginning of the gorge and the recession of the ice-sheet are identified in the following way: As long as the ice-barrier still crossed the Mohawk Valley the natural outlet at the eastern end of Lake Ontario southward, and thence by the way of the Hudson River Valley to the sea, was closed, and the pent-up waters of both Lake Erie and Lake Ontario would be kept at nearly the same level. The removal of the ice-barrier by the recession of the ice-sheet, as it melted into floods, would necessarily lower the waters in both lakes, but at the time the subsidence of the water would permit the formation of the cataract at the point at which the Niagara flowed over the limestone. Thus the beginning of the Niagara gorge in its relation to the retreat of the glaciers is fixed. The simple problem now is to determine the rate of erosion and the distance eroded. From observations made during recent years a unit of measure has been determined which is certainly fair, since the rate of erosion must be as slow now as it ever was. The result arrived at is, that seven thousand years is the age of the oldest portion of the Niagara gorge.

Another time-measure is found in the gorge of the Mississippi between Fort Snelling and the Falls of St. Anthony.† The distance is about eight miles. For a variety of reasons Professor N. H. Winchell concludes "that that part of the Mississippi gorge above Fort Snelling has been excavated by the recession of the Falls since the last general drift movement."... Whether this was at the beginning or at the acme of cold, or at the recession of the ice, is a question which may well be considered; but at this time the only point that is claimed is, that it is not earlier than the beginning of the last glacial epoch, and probably was near the acme of cold. By a comparison of *The Ice Age in North America, p. 456. + Ibid., p. 460.

the dates at which the Falls were at different points, Professor Winchell determines the rate of recession. By means of this rate, which is based upon evidence extending over a period of one hundred and seventy-six years, and entirely just since the rate must have been at least as slow in that period as at any time previous, he estimates that seven thousand eight hundred and three years must have been required for the recession of the Falls from Fort Snelling.

The conclusions arrived at in these calculations have been confirmed, according to Professor Wright, by a variety of smaller water-falls and gorges in Ohio.* Dr. E. Andrews, from a study of the shores of Lake Michigan, has arrived at a similar conclusion. Professor Wright says, in reference to the relation of these calculations to the Trenton man:

This, of course, does not take us back to the period when the front of the glacier lay in the head waters of the Delaware and the Little Miami River, and when glacial floods were depositing the gravel at Trenton, N. J., and at Loveland and Madisonville, O., where Doctors Abbott and Metz have found palæolithic implements; but it does bring us back to within a comparatively short distance of that period, the difference being merely the time necessary for the melting back of the ice from the summit of the Catskills to the southern flanks of the Adirondacks, and from the water-partings of the Ohio to the north shore of Lake Erie.

Assuming the discoveries, of Dr. Abbott and others, of evidences of the existence of palæolithic man in America to be correct, it is a difficult fact to understand how man in the time. of the ice-period could have populated America to such an extent as to have reached the upper waters of the Mississippi River. Science is putting a heavy load upon those rude flint flakes and chipped quartz! It is an instance of a remarkable faith. If it be true, a great many questions will arise. Did man originate on this continent? If not, how did he come here? If he came from the North, the probability is that he was preglacial. If he did not come from the North, how did he reach these shores? Is he Asiatic or European? However these questions may be answered, according to the foregoing, his origin was comparatively recent. Beyond the flakes, which at the most carry him back only to the closing scenes of the ice-age, all is conjecture. If paleolithic man was swept +Ibid., p. 471.

The Ice Age in North America, p. 468.

from the earth utterly by some great overthrow, as some geologists think, and a long interval elapsed before neolithic man appeared, was paleolithic man the antediluvian of the Bible? It is at least very suggestive. All that can be said is, that it might have been so.

Professors Wright, Winchell, Haynes, and Dr. Andrews agree that the close of the ice-age was scarcely seven thousand years ago. Professor Dawson says that the age of man is comparatively recent, and favorably quotes Dr. Andrews. Professor A. Winchell estimates the appearance of man in Europe at from five to seven thousand years. Mr. Le Conte says:

In conclusion, we may say that we have not as yet any certain knowledge of man's time on the earth. It may have been one hundred thousand years, or it may have been ten thousand years, but more probably the former.

It is clear that there is very respectable authority for a recent date for the appearance of man. All presumptions that he must have been immensely earlier because of the doctrine of evolution are out of place, since evolution itself is in many of its claims, and especially in regard to man's origin, a presumption.

Professor Dawson says:

The Christian, on his part, may feel satisfied that the scattered monumental relics of the caves and gravels will tell no story very different from that which he has long believed on other evidence, nor any thing inconsistent with those views of man's heavenly origin and destiny which have been the most precious inheritance of the greatest and best minds of every age, from that early prehistoric period when men, palæolithic men, no doubt, began to invoke the name of Jehovah, the coming Saviour, down to those times when life and immortality were brought to light, for all who will see, by the Saviour already come.*

*Story of the Earth and Man. p. 311.

Les W Gallagher.

ART. IV. THE MISSION OF THE ANGLO-SAXON.

THERE are good reasons for believing, on purely scientific grounds, that the whole human race had a common ancestor. Darwin, in his Descent of Man, inclines to this opinion, which has also been earnestly and ably advocated by Quatrefages in his various anthropological writings. If this is the true theory there must have been a time when there was only one language, from which sprang all the various languages and dialects now existing. It has often been stated with great positiveness by polygenists, who are generally extreme evolutionists also, that the human race came into existence at several different places and at various times; and that, therefore, the languages in use. at the present time could not all have had a common origin. The chief argument adduced in favor of this position, both by anthropologists and philologists is, that the various races of men and the different languages known to exist differ so greatly from each other that it is impossible that they could have had a common origin. To a layman, however, it looks as if this diversity was the last argument that a Darwinist should employ ; for certainly the different races of men do not differ as much in appearance as the different varieties of pigeons; and Darwin has shown that these are all descended from a common stock. The same reasoning may be applied to language. However much different languages may vary in structure, it is nevertheless true that no two languages are so entirely dissimilar that some resemblance may not be found between them.

But it may be well to admit, at the outset, that linguistic science can never demonstrate either the original unity or the original variety of the human race. The reason is, that the data are, and probably always will be, wanting. The human species cannot well be less than ten thousand years old, and the oldest written records scarcely go back more than half that far. The Egyptian hieroglyphics are, doubtless, the oldest literary monuments in existence, and, admitting the extreme claims for the antiquity of these, they do not go beyond four thousand years B. C. We should thus have a period of about four thousand years during which the art of writing was unknown, or at least from which no records have come down to

us, which amounts to the same thing as if it had not been known. Languages, when not preserved by literary documents or wide-spread custom, change with astonishing rapidity. The words that we use now in counting from one to ten do not greatly differ from those used by our Aryan ancestors thousands of years ago; but this is because these Aryans had reached a considerable degree of civilization before they left their primitive "cradle," wherever that may have been. The speech of savages, however, usually contains but a few hundred words, and these may be forgotten or entirely changed in a generation or two. "Among many South American Indians the language changes from clan to clan and almost from hut to hut, so that members of different families are obliged to have recourse to gestures to eke out the scanty pittance of oral discourse that is mutually intelligible." It is said that early in the present century a dictionary of the language of some of the Central American tribes became in ten years completely useless, so greatly had the dialect changed.

In the language of Tahiti four of the ten simple numerals used a hundred years ago have become extinct.

Two was rua; it is now piti.
Four was lea; it is now maha.
Five was rima; it is now pae.
Six was ono; it is now feue.

If a language can change so as to be unintelligible in a decade what might we not expect in four hundred decades? The present diversity of language, therefore, furnishes no argument against their original unity.

Starting, then, with a single tongue, for many centuries after the advent of man upon the earth his tendency, as well as that of his language, was centrifugal. In the course of time this one language had ramified into thousands of branches. But the tendency is now in the opposite direction. Civilization kills out inferior dialects, and cultivated tongues take their places. Thus the number of tongues actually spoken is constantly decreasing. In view of these facts the inquiry as to what language shall be the final survivor, or, in other words, what will be the language of the future, cannot but be pertinent and interesting. The principle of the struggle for life and the survival of the fittest comes into play here with great force, and