1896. JOSEPH PRESTWICH. 95 



The discoveries, made known in 1847 by Boucher de Perthes, of 

 flint weapons together with teeth of the mammoth in the gravels 

 of the Somme Valley had attracted the attention of Dr. Falconer, 

 and he induced Prestwich, in 1859, to investigate these most 

 interesting deposits. After careful study, in which he was joined by 

 Sir John Evans, he satisfied himself that the flint implements were 

 the work of man, that they occurred undisturbed in beds of sand and 

 gravel, together with remains of mammoth, Rhinoceros tichorhinus, 

 Hyana spelaa, and other Pleistocene Mammalia. 



These researches were in part stimulated by the discovery, in 

 1S58, of flint implements with bones of extinct animals in Brixham 

 Cave ; and they served to confirm the previous and long-neglected 

 discovery of flint implements in Kent's Hole, Torquay, made by the 

 Rev. John MacEnery. Sir John Evans, moreover, directed attention 

 to the forgotten discovery of flint implements at Hoxne, in Suffolk, 

 a fact originally published in 1800. No time was, therefore, lost in 

 visiting this and other English localities, and the results were brought 

 before the Royal Society in 1859 and 1862. At the conclusion of his 

 second paper, Prestwich remarks : "That we must greatly extend our 

 present chronology with respect to the first existence of man appears 

 inevitable ; but that we should count by hundreds of thousands of 

 years is, I am convinced, in the present state of the inquiry, unsafe 

 and premature." In his latest observations on the subject, he has ex- 

 pressed his belief " that Palaeolithic Man came down to within 10,000 

 to 12,000 years of our own time," while he may have had, " supposing 

 him to be of early Glacial age, no greater antiquity than, perhaps, 

 about from 38,000 to 47,000 years" (Collected Papers, p. 46). 



For his original researches on the valley deposits yielding 

 implements and weapons of palaeolithic man, Prestwich was awarded 

 a Royal IMedal by the Royal Society, in 1865. The full report on the 

 exploration of the Brixham Cave was prepared by Prestwich and 

 communicated to the same Society in 1872, the animal remains being 

 described by Busk, and the flint implements by Sir John Evans. 



About the time of his retirement from business in 1872, Mr. 

 Prestwich married the niece of his old friend Dr. Falconer, and 

 settled in a house (Darent Hulme) which he built at Shoreham, near 

 Sevenoaks. He was not, however, to retire from active geological 

 work. After the death of John Phillips in 1874 ^^ "^^^^ offered the 

 professorship of Geology at Oxford, and this he accepted, now 

 spending a portion of his time in that city. The duties of a geological 

 professor at Oxford are not perhaps very onerous, but Prestwich filled 

 the office with dignity and advantage to the University. Phillips, 

 who excelled in eloquence, had at times no more than three students, 

 as geology received no encouragement from the University authorities. 

 Few geologists of note have, therefore, hailed from Oxford as com- 

 pared with Cambridge, and we call to mind only Edgeworth David 

 (now Professor of Geology in the University of Sydney) and 



