PRESIDENTS ADDRESS. 203 



bones therein contained — while the flints are not ; and it has 

 been suggested that the beds of drift, with the enclosed mam- 

 malian remains, may have been swept away, or disturbed, by 

 local inundations or changes of surface, which have also borne 

 with them the works of a race of men who lived on the surface 

 of the original drift. And hence the intermixture oi the imple- 

 ments with the gravel and the remains of mammals — their 

 specific gravity accounting for their basement position. Sir 

 Walter Trevelyan, among others, inclines to this explanation, 

 and puts it clearly in a letter to the Athenceum. " Is there not 

 abundant evidence," says he, " in some of the crag beds, that 

 fossils of very different ages may, amongst diluvium (as this is), 

 be brought together in one bed; so that it can scarcely be con- 

 sidered (without further evidence), from their mere juxtaposition, 

 that the animals whose bones are found in this drift were living 

 at the same period as the men who owned the implements ?" 

 These various speculations, and the interest excited in the subject, 

 led Mr. Prestwich, Professor Henslowe, and others, to visit 

 Hoxne, where flint implements were found in 1797, and make 

 investigations on the spot. Mr. Prestwich came to the con- 

 clusion that they were discovered with the mammalian bones in 

 some of the lower beds of gravel ; while Professor Henslowe 

 attributes them to upper and disturbed deposits, produced by 

 secondary action. The question turns on technical terms em- 

 ployed by the workmen for the various beds, and is one which 

 seems scarcely likely ever to be settled, as nearly the whole of 

 the beds have been excavated in order to obtain the brick-earths 

 for manufacture. Following the communication of Sir Walter 

 Trevelyan, in the Athenceum, is a letter by Professor Worsaae, 

 most of which was read by Mr. Mennell, and of which I give 

 the closing paragraph: — " I offer these comparative remarks in 

 the hope that they may throw some light upon the great and 

 important question of the day — the question about the antiquity 

 of the human race. I fully agree with Sir Charles Lyell, ' that 

 the evidence is very strong in favour of a very high antiquity,' 

 as there really is no reason to doubt that true implements of flint, 

 works of human art, frequently have been found in the drift, 



