VOL. XVIII. (i) THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS 5 



and the anthropologist are on common ground in hesitating to 

 conckide that the succession of the fossil remains of the mam- 

 malia, and especially of apes and men, suggests that homo 

 sapiens belongs to a period earher than the Pleistocene ; but 

 that other human species may possibly have come into exist- 

 ence in the Pliocene, hardly in the Miocene, and still less in the 

 OHgocene epoch.' If, of course, we could refer with certainty 

 the so-called Eoliths to the Tertiary period, the existence of 

 human life on this planet must be r^erred to a far earlier age 

 than the more sober geologist or anthropologist is now pre- 

 pared to admit. But in the existing state of our information, 

 as I shall point out later on, the difficulties surrounding the 

 Eolithic question are so serious that all attempts to correlate 

 them with the stratification of prehistoric man must be 

 accepted with caution. 



The enormous changes in the physiography of Western 

 Europe since the beginning of the palaeolithic period are fami- 

 liar to us all and require no discussion. It is sufficient to say 

 that this period is now by Professor Sollas — though I believe 

 his conclusions are not universally accepted — divided into 

 three groups, each represented by one or more than one human 

 stage, the Upper including Magdalenian, Solutrean, and Aurig- 

 nacian man ; the Middle the Mousterian ; the Lower the 

 Acheuhan, Chellean, Strepyan and Mesvinian, these terms 

 being derived from the sites in which remains of men and his 

 artefacts have been identified. It is now practically certain 

 that Mousterian man, of whom remains have been discovered 

 at Kent's Hole near Torquay, Wolvercote in Oxfordshire, 

 Reculver in Kent, and Mildenhall in Suffolk, represents the 

 earliest type in these islands of which we possess adequate 

 knowledge.^ -By this time the warm fauna had disappeared, 

 owing to the increase of cold, and this race of man was con- 

 temporary with the mammoth, a fact which does not neces- 

 sarily imply the prevalence of Arctic conditions, because his 

 range is conditioned less by temperature than by the distribu- 

 tion of the plants upon which it fed. The circumstance that 

 in this period man first began to make his home in caves has 

 preserved his remains for our observation. 



1. W. J. Sollas, Ancient Hunters and their Modern Representatives, 1911, p. 67 



2. Discoveries of a date later than that of the preparation of this address cannot now 

 be considered with the attention which they deserve. 



