20 The Thirty-Fourth General Meeting. 
held in the hand at one end and trimmed to a point at the other 
appears to have afforded the most advanced idea of a general tool 
for all the purposes of life, so that the paleolithic or earliest form 
of implements can be everywhere distinguished by their simplicity 
from the neolithic or stone implements of a later date, and they are 
more or less the same in all the localities in which they have been 
found. As regards the time necessary for the erosion of the valleys 
and the deposition of the beds belonging to this period it is generally 
admitted that it cannot be computed in years. At first geologists 
were inclined to demand an enormous time for it, but recently, in 
consequence of the observations on the erosion of glaciers, less time 
has been thought necessary, and Mr. Prestwich, in a paper read 
lately before the Geological Society, has given his reasons for 
believing that the time estimated since the termination of the last 
glacial epoch may be greatly curtailed. But although the sequence 
of palzolithic, neolithic, and bronze implements had been firmly 
established in the north and west of Europe, it had not been proved 
that the same sequence took place in Egypt, Assyria, and those 
countries in which civilisation dates back to a very much earlier 
time, for it seemed certain that the Stone Age of the north and west 
of Europe was contemparaneous with a very much more advanced 
civilisation in the south and east. The attention of archeologists 
had, therefore, been turned for some time to the question of a Stone 
Age in Egypt. The valley of the Nile, it was found, was covered 
with flint implements which corresponded in form to those of the 
paleolithie type of Europe. But this coincidence of form alone, 
though highly suggestive for the reasons I have given, was not in 
itself sufficient to determine sequence, because they had been found 
only on the surface, and in order to prove them anterior to Egyptian 
civilisation it would be necessary to adduce the same kind of evidence 
of their antiquity that had been shown in Europe, by finding 
them in the gravels in the sides of the valley and in places 
which could be proved to have been undisturbed since Egyptian 
civilisation commenced, and this was the more necessary beeause 
it was known that flints were used for embalming purposes in 
Egyptian times. Here I may be permitted again to refer to 
