GLACIAL MAN. SKERTCHLY. 141 



great man, he went Avest but a few years since, having spent 

 nearly a century benefiting the earth -ttith his profound 

 originaUt}'. He took casts of my implements, and I suppose 

 they still exist. Dear old friend, the storm that raged never 

 shook your faith in my work— for you loiew. To him I owe 

 my introduction to T. Belt. We all three went over the ground 

 together and Belt was satisfied. Alas ! he died shortly after, 

 I beheve in Nova Scotia. 



The Sheffield meeting of the British Association was at 

 hand, and my friend E. B. Tylor (not then knighted) was presi- 

 dent of the Anthropological Section, then.new, much neglected, 

 and a Httle feared. By this time I had begun to wish my silvern 

 speech had been coined into golden silence, and I intended 

 to adopt the tactics of Brer Rabbit, but Tylor wouldn't have 

 it. " You see, Skertchly," he placidly remarked, " neither 

 I nor anybody else cares one spangled sequin about your 

 views, but you will be an attraction and there's sure to be a 

 row, and the Anthropological Section mIU get into the lime- 

 light." So I was offered up, and there ivas a row. Evans, 

 Huxlej'^, Newton (not the gravitation maker but the bird man), 

 and all the other magnates whose words decided Avhether a 

 thing was true and respectable, true and naughty, or neither, 

 clubbed me as if each had inherited Thor's hammer. But 

 I was never A\ithout one champion, and Sir John Lubbock 

 stood up for me like — well, like Lord Avebury. Afterwards 

 pubhc opinion was too much for hint, and he more than half 

 recanted in Prehistoric Times. 



Next came the meeting of the "Americanists" at Brussels. 

 Evans, Lubbock, and I were selected to represent England. 

 Lubbock was called to the South of France suddenly and 

 couldn't come ; Evans didn't come, I don't know why ; and 

 I stood there alone to represent Britannia, armed with a stone 

 axe instead of a trident. I read a paper correlating the 

 American and European old stone tools, and did it in my own 

 hardened Avay. All the fine naturafists of Europe and some 

 of the Americans were there. Again I had a soUtary champion 

 in that splendid fighter the Abbe Renard, then holding a 

 chair at Louvain. 



A very serious accident caused me to leave the Geological 

 Survey, and for months I was forbidden to read. For some 

 time my wife and I wandered over France and Itah% and 



