xxiv Journal of Proceedinf/s. 



period the whole of the human inhabitants of Europe were using stone 

 exchisively, at another period nothing but bronze, and at another period 

 only iron. As pointed out by Sir John Lubbock, these ages no doubt 

 overlapped, and stone might have been in use in one country at a period 

 when bronze had found its way into a neighbouring country. The 

 remains found in the peat-bogs simply indicated three successive stages 

 of civilisation in one district, but there was no reason whatever for 

 beheving that each stage was absolutely contemporaneous with a 

 con-esponding stage tliroughout the whole of Europe. Then there was 

 evidence of another kind furnished by the well-lmown refuse-heaps or 

 "kitchen-middens" found on the shores of the Baltic, consisting of great 

 mounds of shells which appear to have been cast away as refuse by the 

 people of the Stone Age. In these heaps were found none but stone 

 implements ; they belonged without doubt to the Stone Age, and no 

 metallic weapon of any kind had ever been found in them. Facts of this 

 sort of course w^ent to show that the use of stone preceded that of metal, 

 which required greater sldll and knowledge in order to work it, and they 

 further went to support the view that our ancestors were of a more 

 barbarous type than their successors, and not, as is often stated, that man 

 has been degraded from a more ci^^.lised state. 



The Stone Age had been divided into two periods, the Neolithic or 

 Newer Stone Age, and the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. The first 

 evidence of man's advent upon the earth, as afforded by these worked 

 flints, according to the generally-received opinion, showed that he 

 appeared about the time of the last glacial epoch which came on at the 

 close of the great Tertiary Period of geologists. Of late years some 

 authorities had stated that worked flints had been found in strata of 

 inter-glacial or possibly of even pre-glacial age. The evidence had been 

 much disputed, but he (the President) was glad to see that Prof. Eamsay, 

 the Du-ector- General of the Geological Survey, in the last edition of his 

 ' Physical Geology and Geography of Great Britain,' had unhesitatingly 

 accepted Mr. S. B. Skertchley's statement that he had found flint 

 implements in brick-earth beneath the Chalky Boulder-Clay near Brandon, 

 in Sufl'olk. So far as he himself was concerned, the President saw no 

 a priori reason for refusing to accept the evidence of man's enormous 

 antiquity — an antiquity which might extend back to pre-glacial times and 

 even as far back as the Miocene Period. The implements of the Old 

 Stone Age were of a much ruder type than those of the Neolithic Period, 

 but that they were both of human workmanship would not for a moment 

 be doubted by anyone who would examine them fairly and intelligently. 

 Paleolithic implements were found in association with animals now 

 extinct, and their enormous antiquity was further proved by the great 

 elevations at which the flints were sometimes found above the existing 

 rivers. By means of diagrams drawn on the black-board, Mr. Meldola 

 then showed the manner in which valleys were hollowed-out by river- 

 action, deposits of alluvium and gravel being left at different elevations 



