must put out of court; there is no evidence of it whatsoever.

Because the land was more friable originally? Well, there is a
great deal to be said for that. The experience of every countryman
tells him that bare or fallow land is more easily washed away than
land under vegetation. And no doubt, when these gravels and sands
rose from the sea, they were barren for hundreds of years. He has
some measure of the time required, because he can tell roughly how
long it takes for sands and shingles left by the sea to become
covered with vegetation. But he must allow that the friability of
the land must have been originally much greater than now, for
hundreds of years.

But again, does that fact really cut off any great space of time
from his hundreds of thousands of years? For when the land first
rose from the sea, that glen was not there. Some slight bay or bend
in the shore determined its site. That stream was not there. It
was split up into a million little springs, oozing side by side from
the shore, and having each a very minute denuding power, which kept
continually increasing by combination as the glen ate its way
inwards, and the rainfall drained by all these little springs was
collected into the one central stream. So that when the ground
being bare was most liable to be denuded, the water was least able
to do it; and as the denuding power of the water increased, the
land, being covered with vegetation, became more and more able to
resist it. All this he has seen, going on at the present day in the
similar gullies worn in the soft strata of the South Hampshire
coast; especially round Bournemouth.

So the two disturbing elements in the calculation may be fairly set
off against each other, as making a difference of only a few
thousands or tens of thousands of years either way; and the age of
the glen may fairly be, if not a million years, yet such a length of
years as mankind still speak of with bated breath, as if forsooth it
would do them some harm.

I trust that every scientific man in this room will agree with me,
that the imaginary squire or ploughman would have been conducting
his investigation strictly according to the laws of the Baconian
philosophy. You will remark, meanwhile, that he has not used a
single scientific term, or referred to a single scientific
investigation; and has observed nothing and thought nothing, which
might not have been observed and thought by any one who chose to use
h