The Président’s Address. 15 | 
rather for their incredulity—for their blind adherence to traditional 
ehronology—than for too ready an acceptance of new views. Yet 
they may well be pardoned for long hesitation before they could 
bring themselves to believe that man really inhabited Europe at a 
time when not only the urus and the bison and the reindeer occupied 
the whole of Europe as far south as the Alps, but when the cave 
lion, the cave bear, the long-haired rhinoceros, the mammoth, the 
musk sheep, and the hippopotamus also formed part of the European 
fauna; when the climate was very different and liable to great oscil- 
lations; when our rivers had but begun to excavate their valleys, 
and the whole condition of the country must therefore have been 
singularly different from what it is now. Gradually, however, the 
evidence became overwhelming; the statements of Tournal and 
Christol were confirmed by Lartet and Christy, by De Vibraye and 
others; those of Schmerling by Dupont; of McEnery by Vivian and 
Pengelly.; and at length the evidence, well summed up in his work 
-on “Cave Hunting,” by Mr. Boyd Dawkins, himself a successful 
worker in this field of research, left no room for doubt. As regards 
the drift gravels, M. de Perthes not only discovered unmistakable 
flint implements in the drift gravel of the Somme valley, but he. 
convinced every one that these implements really belonged to the 
gravels in which they occurred, and he taught us to find similar im- 
plements for ourselves in the corresponding strata of the river systems. 
For the full significance, however, of these facts, we are indebted to 
the profound geological knowledge of Mr. Prestwich, while Mr. 
Evans taught us to appreciate the essential characteristics which 
distinguish the stone implements of the two periods, to which I 
have ventured to give the names Paleolithic and Neolithic. Charac- 
teristic remains of the Paleolithic period have been found in this 
neighbourhood by Dr. Blackmore, Mr. Stevens, Mr. James Brown, » 
and others. We shall see an interesting series of them when we 
visit the Museum. Whether man existed in Europe at a still earlier 
period, in pre-glacial, or even as some suppose in miocene times, is 
a question still under discussion, and into which I will not now enter. 
Under any circumstances the antiquity of the human race must 
be very considerable. This conclusion rests upon three distinct 
