to affirm," that though the state of the bones at Burring+ "don affords indications of very high antiquity, there is "no reason for not considering them as postdiluvian." There is, assuredly, the same reason for not considering them as postdiluvian, after contemplating the geological description given of them, as that which we have found for not considering those at Durfort and Kösritz as postdiluvian. With respect to "wretches perishing in a

cave, because military operations were conducted in "their quarter," I confess, I do not trace the certain philosophical correspondence required, of cause and effect: I must acknowledge, that the suggestion appears to me to stand stronger on convenient invention, than on historical experience. And, with respect to the allegation of 66 an ancient catacomb and barrow at Weller in the same neighbourhood," in corroboration that the limestone cave at Burringdon was a place of sepulture in early "times;" it cannot surely have more weight in the argument, than the allegation of a churchyard in the neighbourhood of Durfort.

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2. The second case (p. 165)—" of the remains of human "bodies in the most secluded and distant part of a large "fissure of the Wokely Hole, also in the calcareous Men

dip Hills, and separated from the main chambers of the "cave by a subterraneous river of considerable size"-is open to the same remarks. We have here a position described, analogous to the secluded recess in the cavern of Durfort. Mr. Buckland says; " Among the loose bones I

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found a small piece of a coarse sepulchral urn." Why, I would beg leave to ask, a sepulchral urn? It can only be legitimately stated, in the first instance, to be " a small piece "of coarse pottery;" whether it be part of a sepulchral urn, becomes another question. But, if these bones had been placed in sepulchral urns, many pieces would probably have been found among " the teeth and human fragments,

dispersed through reddish mud and clay, and some of "them united with it by stalagmite into a firm osseous "breccia." Whereas, since the bones are stated to "have "been broken by repeated digging," the fragment in question may just as probably be a remnant of some earthen vessel pertaining to the labourers employed in that digging. The entrance of the high-floods into this cave, cannot prove the bones to be postdiluvian: since it is acknowledged, that they have resisted those floods, and "are very old," no inference can be deduced from that circumstance to limit their high antiquity, or to authorise a decision that they are "not antediluvian."

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3, 4, and 6. These cases, must also be subjected to the rule resulting from the combined phenomena, of Kirkdale, Durfort, and Kösritz.

5. The fifth case, of a single female skeleton manifestly modern, found in the open cave of Paviland, has no common point of analogy with the other five cases.

Thus, then, it is now at length fully apparent; that, although the great mass of the human population of the antediluvian earth must have perished under circumstances which have prevented so multitudinous a dispersion of their remains as of those of the brute creation, yet, some scattered vestiges of that population have at last been recovered, to evidence their participation in the same Universal Catastrophe.

NOTE [VI.]

On the Eastern Origination of Mankind'.

It is alleged by Voltaire, in the Introduction to his discourse on the Spirit of Nations, that "whoever considers "nations as a philosopher will begin his contemplation in "the East, from whence population, &c. first proceeded;" and he immediately applies his principle, by placing the Chinese first in the order of his History, as the most Eastern people of Asia. He needed not to be told, that the idea of the East is an idea entirely relative, and, that a point considerably to the East of all Europe, may nevertheless be West of the greater part of Asia; but, we are aware of the motive which prompted him, and the school over which he presided, to disregard that distinction and to advance the Chinese to the foremost rank upon the page of history; and we are, at the same time, equally aware of the effrontery of affecting a grave appeal to the dark and incompetent traditions of the Chinese, which appeal is made with no other view than to endeavour to exalt their spurious authority, in the impious but vain hope of depressing, in an equal proportion, the Sacred testimony of Scripture.

Nevertheless, the argument that endeavours to carry the origin of civilisation and of science indefinitely Eastward, and which strives to attach to the name of the East such mysterious importance, has chanced to derive a sort of indirect support from an error first introduced into the

1 This Note, is a corrected reprint of some observations published several years ago in The Oriental Collections of Sir WILLIAM OUSELEY, with a few additions.

text of Genesis by the ancient Greek interpreters of the Pentateuch; which error, passing by their authority into almost every subsequent version, has been adopted by the generality of learned investigators of antiquity. It is the rectification of that inveterate error, that forms the subject of this Note. In Gen. viii. 3, the sacred historian relates, that when the waters of the Deluge had begun to retire from the surface of the earth, the ark of Noah, which contained the first parents of a new race, came to a station on the mountain of Ararat in Armenia; where, the family of the great Patriarch first descended from that fabric; where, they resumed the occupations of a stationary life; and from whence, the first population of the earth was to issue forth.

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The first account of the movements of that new race, is contained in Gen. xi. 2. But, here the Septuagint introduce a clause, which is abhorrent from the sense, and perversive of the terms, of the original record. They make the historian relate thus : και εγενετο εν τῳ κινησαι αυτούς ΑΠΟ ΑΝΑΤΟΛΩΝ, ευρον πεδίον εν γῇ Σενααρ· And it came to pass they moved FROM THE EAST, they met with a plain "in the land of Senaar," or Babylonia. Here, we encounter a statement which introduces extreme disorder into a short, direct, and simple narrative. The historian had deposited the patriarchal family in the neighbourhood of Ararat in Armenia; the first place to which he conducts their offspring, is the plain of Senaar, lying South East of Ararat ; yet, he is made by the Greek translators to bring them thither, ano avarohov, "from the East." This interpretation, has been productive of much theoretical evil; and has obliged many persons to be silent, without conviction, when the authority of Moses has been confidently urged in evidence of mankind having spread to the East of Asia, and having grown up there into civilisation and political importance, before they made a retrograde or. Western movement towards their primitive seats in the neighbour

hood of Tigris and Euphrates; on which latter river, they then raised the celebrated Tower of Babel or Babylon. For, certainly, if the translation of the Septuagint be legitimate, either the historian contradicts himself, or he leaves a most unaccountable and embarrassing chasm in his history; namely, between the first establishment of mankind in the West of Asia, and their supposed return from the East of Asia to the land of Senaar: of which interval of time, he does not intimate a single event or circumstance.

But, the whole of this difficulty will be found to have proceeded from an injudicious choice originally made by the Greek interpreters, between two senses of an equivocal word. The term p in the original, expresses bothin principio, olim, (at first, originally,) and—ex Oriente, (from the East',) between which two senses, the Alexandrian translators unfortunately made choice of the latter for this

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Op," antiquum, priscum ; ante, pridem, olim, antrorsum; Oriens.” (CASTELL. Lex. Heb.)—The primary sense of this word, is ante-before, generally, with relation equally to time and place. In its relation to the former, it obtains the signification of antiquum―ancient, or before other things: as ante, mare et tellus, &c." (Ovid. Met. lib. i.): in its relation to the latter, it acquires that of antrorsum—before or in front of the person, and from thence, it derives its secondary sense of the East, or that part of the world which was considered as before or in front, by excellence. No custom seems to have been more extensively prevalent among primitive nations than this, of regarding the East as the front, and denominating the cardinal points of the heaven with reference to it. Hence, the Hebrews called the South the right-hand, the North the lefthand, and the West the after or behind:-" à situ Orientis quæ anterior (6 pars vocatur, meridionalem appellant dexteram, septentrionalem sinis"tram, et occidentalem posteriorem" (Castell. r): nempe quod "Hebræi in geographia faciem ad Orientem verterent." (MICHAELIS. Sup. ad Lex. Heb. no. 993.

"By this notion (observes Michaelis) we are to explain Psalm cxxi. 5. Jehovah is thy shade upon thy right hand,' i. e. on the South, so that the sun shall not smite thee by day.'" Vestiges of this custom are