334 the president's address. 



and they attended a meeting of the local Society. They ex- 

 pressed considerable surprise at the display of microscopes in a 

 suburb, as well as the interest shown in matters of science by 

 the middle classes in England, whereas in Germany it was 

 chiefly left to professors. I consider this as a great compliment 

 to us, and we are not accustomed to such very often from our 

 German friends. 



Association has much to do with our habits, and it often 

 happens that these, if not formed, yet have their direction 

 given by our friendships. It is not improbable, therefore, that 

 in my case, an early acquaintance with Dr. Mantell, and still 

 more with Dr. Lee, the amiable bat eccentric owner of Hartwell 

 House^ in Buckinghamshire, to whom all men of science or 

 art were welcome, may have influenced me, I met there Mr. 

 Read, Vicar of Stone, one of the founders of the Royal Micro- 

 scopical Society, members of the Astronomical Society, 

 geologists, and many others. All visitors were expected to have 

 some walk in science or to be in initiation. Now the period, to 

 which I am alluding, was notable for the awakening, up of 

 interest in the antiquity of man on this earth by a discovery 

 made in the valley of the Somme of numerous implements of 

 flint. I call it an awakening, because long before, viz., in 1797, 

 an hundred years ago, similar objects were found in strata at 

 Hoxne, in Suffolk, a village well known to me as my mother's 

 birth-place, and for its legendary traditions respecting the 

 martyrdom of Edmund, King of the East Angles, which are not 

 quite effaced, though nearly a thousand years have passed 

 away. It seems almost like irony to think that, in such a place, 

 objects should be found, and first recorded, which involved a 

 new walk in human history. Mr. Frere, the discoverer, sent 

 an account in 1800 to the Society of Antiquaries, full of intel- 

 ligence and a correct appreciation of its geology, in which he 

 was quite before his time. 



But the time was not yet ripe to set aside the accepted 

 Jewish chronology for one- that was indefinite. Besides that, 

 the political horizon of the day was so full of dark clouds that 

 the discovery in a remote village, though well recorded, was 

 soon forgotten. It was in 1847 that M. Boucher de Perthes, of 

 Abbeville, issued his volume entitled " Antiquites Celtiques," 

 .in which he gave an .account of his discovery in the drift of. the 



