4 Prehistoric Races.

may be relied on to interpret things rightly when

applied to the unknown. Here there is no sufficient enumeration of facts to formulate any law.
Solitary facts known are compared with solitary
unknowns; and conclusions are jumped at from
such premises as logic will not admit, to begin
with. And the end of the argument corresponds
to the beginning. For when the hastily constructed
law, derived from a few known facts, is tested in
actual cases under our eyes, it is found so often
faulty in its sum total of years required to fossilize
a tree on the bank of the Mississippi, or to lay down
ten or twenty feet of loam, that, whenever geology
pretends to measure its time in terms of history,
we are perfectly justified in suspending our judgment, until it has found a common denominator for
historical duration and its own duration
two very
different things.
17. It does mark the order of succession,
whether in the soils deposited, or in the objects
which those deposits contain. It marks
inductive. too the relative proportion of duration,
which respective thicknesses of the stratification seem to have required. But, with all that,
the conditions of earth, and water, and air, and sky
have been so different at the different periods of terrestrial evolution that, to read the lesson of stratification aright, there would seem to be needed an
equipment of science on pretty nearly all the laws
of the universe. Astronomy, meteorology, geogra-

Archceology : Ages of Metal. 25

phy are referred to in explaining geological formations; natural physics and terrestrial physics; mineralogy and chemistry; botany, zoology, physiology;
comparative anatomy. Geology, in fact, is a science of induction which bases itself on all the orders of facts and on all the laws in the boundless field
of nature.
No doubt, within the restricted limits of the present question, that of the prehistoric antiquity of
man, it does not lie open to all these uncertainties,
because it does not appeal to so many exact sciences. Still, not being exempt from a limited sum
of the scientific references, it remains liable to a
moderate sum of the consequent uncertainties. In
brief, geology is not the science to arrange an exact
chronology for the prehistoric periods. Let us see
if archaeology has done so, or palaeontology, or
anthropology, strictly so called.

18. The archaeological results are as follows.

Prehistoric articles of industry have been found in
great numbers; and numerous, too, are
the localities in which they have been
unearthed. There are stones, and bronzes, and copper; tools, chips and flints; there are places called
Danish kjokken-moddings, and there are Swiss lakedwellings; besides old hearths and camping-grounds,
and caves and other holes in the earth.
19. The reports from these and about them are
summed up in the theory of what are called the
ages of iron, bronze, copper, stone. Supposing