Academy of Science, 15 



ability and miocene man a possibility. In pursuing the subject furtlier, we observe 

 that ou May 22, 1877, a conference of the Anthropological Institute of Great 

 Britain was held upon the subject of the present state of the question of the antiquitj^ 

 of man in England. Mr. John Evans, F. R. S., the president, in his opening 

 remarks, said, "the question laid equally in the domain of, first, the arclieologist 

 (who should decide upon the genuineness of articles of human workmanship); 

 2nd, the anthropologist (who should decide upon human bones), and 3rd, the geologist 

 (who should decide upon the geological age of the deposits), and that great care 

 and caution should be received as to the acceptance of evidence, and that sources 

 of error should be carefully watched for and eliminated." He then alluded to 

 the discoveries, "first, of that at Thenay, of implements which are attributed to a 

 miocene age; to that of the bones of the whale, near Sienna, which are regarded as 

 having been cut by man. There is doubt as to whether this is pliocene or later : 

 of a human skull in a bed regarded as pliocene. There is doubt as to this — espe- 

 cially as a neolithic-appearing spear-head was found in company with it; to that 

 near Lake Zurich of cut staves of wood and other staves with shavings around 

 them in the inter-glacial lignite ; and to others. In these discoveries, the whole 

 question turns upon the geological age of the deposits. Ther« is but little doubt 

 that if the quaternary man of Britain had attained the ability to fabricate what 

 he has left, and to subsist in such a climate — for these people may Jiave been 

 colonists or wanderers from the original stock whose home was under a more 

 favored clime — that remains of yet earlier members of the human race will event- 

 ually be found." 



A paper was read by Prof. Boyd Dawkins upon the "Evidence of the Pleis- 

 tocene Caves of Great Britain," in which he said that " it has been recently urged 

 that all paleolithic deposits both in caves and river beds are of pre- and inter-glacial 

 age; that is, that they date back to an antiquity vastly more remote than that 

 post-glacial period to which they have been referred by Lyell, Prestwich, Evans 

 and others. The argument is based on those conditions of life which are said to be 

 iucoQsistent with those of post-glacial times. * * * The antiquity of man can 

 not be measured by the chronology of the historian, but by the sequence of those 

 physical and biological changes whicli are so familiar to the geologist. * * * 

 The nature of the evidence of the caves may be best estimated by taking a partic- 

 ular case ; say that of the paleolithic caves of Cresswell Crags. * * * On the 

 floor of these caves was, first, a layer of light-colored sand without fossils (the 

 result of the decomposition of the rock below), next, the lower ossiferous strata, 

 consisting of red sand and clay, averaging three feet in thickness and containing 

 numerous stones and fragments of fossil bones and teeth. These latter are all scored 

 and marked by teeth — the prey of hyenas, and dragged into these dens piecemeal, 

 and well scattered through the sand and clay as the result of the occasional flood- 

 ing of the caves by the stream, which was then near the entrance, although 

 twenty feet below at the present time. These bones belong to the lion, spotted 

 hyena, reindeer, Irish elk, bison, rhinoceros, mammoth, and some other animals. 

 To these must be added man, who left a few rounded quartzite pebbles and flakes of 

 quartzite, of the rudest and roughest sort. The whole group of caves points out 

 that savages of a low order visited the district from time to time. Above the red 

 sand was a fine red loam, sometimes in the upper part or limestone breccia. In this 

 were fragments of bone, some gnawed by hyenas, others broken and scratched by 

 man and associated with charcoal and burnt bone, and implements of quartzite 

 flint and ironstone, of types well known in England and Europe. Implements of 

 flint and bone were very numerous of various kinds, and the incised figure of a 



