The President’s Address. 19 
least idea that beneath his very feet were to be found the relics of 
man’s workmanship at a time when he was contemporaneous with 
the elephant and other extinct animals. But the discoveries of M. 
Boucher de Perthes in the valley of the Somme were going on at 
that time, although they were not recognised by men of science 
until ten years later, when our countrymen, Mr. Evans and Mr. 
Prestwich, confirmed the opinions of the French savant. The valley 
of the Avon, near Salisbury, was one of the first places examined 
by Mr. Prestwich after his return from France in 1859, but although 
the gravels had been well looked over by him and their fauna duly 
recorded, no paleolithic implements were discovered until later by 
Dr. Blackmore! and Mr. Stevens in the drift beds at Fisherton and 
elsewhere, where they were found in beds that had been deposited 
before the valley had worked its way down to the level on which 
Salisbury now stands. Since then, through the munificence of 
Mr. W. Blackmore, the Museum, which bears his name, has made 
Salisbury a place of reference for information on the antiquities of 
this period. Similar discoveries were soon made in the valley of the 
Thames, in which I had the privilege of taking part. Although not 
the first discoverer of palolithic implements in the Thames valley, 
as they had previously been found by Mr. Leech, Mr. Prestwich, 
and Dr. Evans on the seashore near Reculver® I believe I may 
elaim priority for the part of the river near London. Having 
earefully watched for the space of a year or more excavations in the 
drift gravel at Acton, I was able in 1872 to show by means of 
plans and sections published in the Quarterly Journal of the Geo- 
logical Society the exact analogy of the palolithic site there with 
that of the valley of the Somme near Amiens and Abbeville. Other 
similar discoveries have since been made in the valley of the Exe 
and elsewhere in this country. The nature of the implements found 
in these gravels was such as to fully bear out the doctrine of 
evolution, being characterised by extreme simplicity as compared 
with the stone implements of a later date, and they introduce us to 
a condition of the arts of man in which a simple flake or a flint 
? Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, vol. xx., 1864, p. 188. 
* Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, vol. xvii., 1861, p. 362. 
c 2 
