GLACIAL MAN. SKERTCHLY. 1-19 



now, SO far from there being a Palaeolithic Man, anatomists 

 are making of Mm almost as many races or subspecies or 

 even species as there are skeletons, and the}^ are still undecided 

 as to the exact age of most of them. I assert now, as I did then, 

 th,at bones of themselves tell us nothing of their date but only 

 of their race, and an old race may exist to-day. On the 

 Labrador coast you can knock fossil Lingulellas out of Cambrian 

 rocks, and dig their hving descendants from the mud at the 

 chff-foot. Our dear friend Pithecanthropus may be Phocene 

 or Pleistocene ; he might be aUve to-day, but his mere bones 

 would not tell us when he lived — the rocks are the only true 

 timekeepers. 



However, if I failed to dehver human bones, I sent to the 

 Geological Survey Office a good-sized hamper full of bone 

 fragments from the hearth at West Stow above mentioned. 

 They were mostly quite small bits, but I recognised a few teeth 

 of oxen and deer. Huxley, who was our palaeontologist, took 

 but the palest interest in them, but he reported officially that 

 they were mostly too fragmentary for identification, though 

 Cervus elaphas seemed to be among them. I mentioned this at 

 the Cambridge Pliilosophical Society and it proved a bonne 

 bouche to Hughes, who after tearing it to bits proceeded to pick 

 my bones in great style. Did I not know that Cervus elaphas w as 

 late Pleistocene? . If that deer- tooth came out of the Brandon 

 Beds it settled the whole matter ; they were demonstrably 

 post-glacial. And the congregation (save Osmund Fisher) 

 chanted " Amen." What a strained effort my reply seemed ! 

 I pleaded that I didn't find the label but only the specimen ; 

 that I only said the beast from whose jaw the tooth was 

 extracted lived pretty near where he was buried ; that Huxley 

 only erected the tombstone and if he cut the wrong name on it 

 the corpse wasn't altered thereby ; finally that, if Huxley as 

 dentist had got his patient's name right in his books, it proved 

 the elaphas family more aristocratically connected than was 

 suspected, that elaphas belonged to a county family and was 

 not of clodhopper blood. It was of no avail, but the anecdote 

 points a moral and adorns this tale : it shows that if anatomy 

 be not tempered with geology bones become shillelaghs for 

 decorous Donnybrooks. 



Permit me here to put in a little moral on my own account. 

 Remember that my finds were made in the course of my daily 

 work, and that I could spare only too little time over each 

 section, seeing that the powers (not the Geological Survey 



