limited to valley-gravels and the most ancient of bone-caves, the Neolithic show, by their universal distribution and superior workmanship, that they belong to an advanced period. All the savage races still using stone weapons are generally islanders,

Polished Stone Celts (later date), from Cambridgeshire.

cut off from the great centres, so that they are "outliers" of a system once universal. This later period is that of the "Lake Dwellings," which links on to that known to antiquaries as the "Bronze period." To this succeeds the Iron age, and, if you

like, the present, or "Steel" age. The two former are historical-come within the range, not only of scientific deduction, but also of written history. I have simply mentioned them to show how, from the Fig. 172.

Stone Celt (Neolithic), mounted in wooden haft, showing how these implements were used. The haft and weapon preserved in peat, Cumberland.

time when the most ancient and rude of the flint implements were deposited in the river-gravels, there is more or less of an unbroken sequence.

Archæology commences where geology leaves off -the past and the present meet on common ground. Standing on this neutral area, you may gaze backward into the illimitable ages which have gone by, and see the gradual ascension in animal life which began in the dim and distant Laurentian epoch in the animalcule, and has terminated in Man. Looking forward from the same vantage-ground, you may hopefully note the development of society, the growth of civilization, and probability of the unfolding of the social and moral attributes of man as marvellously as the lower animal life has culminated in its existing apex! Throughout, in the buried past, as well as in the yet unfolded future, you never lose sight of the operations of an Almighty Spirit-ever working, never resting!-out of chaos bringing forth order -out of simple protoplasmic material educing the animal and vegetable kingdoms, in all their multitudinous types and varieties, until a small area like the superficies of this planet has teemed with life sufficient to stock a million existing worlds! One generation has passed away, but, in doing so, has furnished a new basis on which the new comer may ascend to a higher physiological platform. Every form, animal and vegetable, has been but the expression of Divine Love, communicating to them the excess of its own joyous life! Every species has been an outwardly crystallized Divine idea. Spirit has clothed itself with matter, until in Man the past and the future have met: the ancient

Greek fable has been more than realized, for it has been true spiritual fire from heaven-given, not stolen-which has been inspired into fleshly clay!

My story is now ended, and, with mine, the series, whose purpose has been to give as plain an outline of the biography of our old world as possible. It will have been seen that a story may be properly read off, even from so common and ordinary an object as a Gravel-pit. In geology, more than any other science, he that humbleth himself shall be exalted! All its objects lie at your feet, and are of the lowliest kind. Not a pebble you accidentally kick before you, not a handful of dust blown by the wind into gutters, not a spadeful of soil turned over, but each is fraught with teaching of the utmost value and of the intensest interest. It is by recognising a Cause that you alone can unlock the secret, setting out with the full belief that everything exists by virtue of a right—has resulted, not from accident, but law,-until you arrive at the highest conception of which man is capable,-that the total of these various laws meets and concentrates into one focus, and finds its expression in a personal and Almighty God!

RETROSPECT.

N the preceding pages we have endeavoured to limn, but in faint and sketchy outlines, the biography of our planet. We now

propose still more briefly to connect the scattered ideas into a short summary. Perhaps the most difficult thing a person experiences when he comes into contact with geological teaching for the first time, is the great demand made upon his imagination for the article of Time, in which to account for geological phenomena.

It bewilders one to contemplate such a practical eternity, and we ask "can all this be true? Many cannot accept the doctrine, but turn away sceptically discontented, thinking they are doing heaven service, by adhering to the older idea that the world is only some six thousand years old, as if the Deity were complimented by supposing His attributes were more honoured by limiting their display to six thousand years, than they are if extended into the past, and made eternal. The more we study the phenomena of geology, however,

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