Flint Drift aud Human Remains, 193 



in other countries ? Is there anything to distinguish it from the 

 gravels containing precisely the same mammalian bones which 

 are familiar to geologists in almost every country, and which 

 have been recognized every here and there over the whole of 

 Europe, from Siberia to Palermo, and from the basin of the Thames 

 to the valley of the Danube ? So far as I have been able to gather 

 from the papers which have detailed the facts, there is nothing to 

 indicate any difference whatever, except that, at least until this 

 discussion arose, human implements had nowhere else been recog- 

 nised as associated with the drift. The absence of such remains 

 elsewhere, however, would go for little in establishing a difference 

 because it is clear that the men who existed before the formation 

 of the Abbeville beds were rude, and probably widely scatttered 

 savages, distant outliers of their race. The chances therefore, 

 were infinite against the preservation either of them or of their 

 works. But even this distinction, it would appear, is being broken 

 down. It is now recollected that so long as sixty years ago, 

 human implements had been discovered in Suffolk under similar 

 conditions, and the fact communicated to the public in an archae- 

 logical journal by the discoverer Mr. Frere. The spot has been 

 visited by Mr. Prestwich, fresh from the Abbeville beds, and he 

 recognises the same phenomena. But this is not all. The scent, 

 once taken up, is becoming stronger and stronger, every day. 

 Closely connected with the period of the drift-gravels are the ossi- 

 ferous caves and caverns so common all over Europe where lime- 

 stones prevail. They have been long known to contain a profu- 

 sion of bones cf the extinct as well as of living mammalia. Here, 

 again, it is now confidently asserted that human implements are 

 being found under conditions which leave no doubt that, whether 

 man was or was not contemporary with these animals, he must at 

 least have preceded the action of these agencies which brought the 

 bones together. The evidence in this case must necessarily be 

 more liable to erroneous interpretation than in the case of imple- 

 ments found in undisturbed beds of gravel, because caverns must 

 at all times have been a resort of savage tribes whenever the en- 

 trances were accessible from the surface. But the evidence seems 

 to be such as is suflScient to convince examiners so careful and 

 acute as Dr. Falconer and Mr. Prestwich of the undoubted pri- 

 ority of man to that diluvial action which appears to have swept 

 into those caverns their mixed contents. But this is not all. It 

 Can. Nat. 3 Vol. VI. No. 3. 



