SIR CHARLES LYELL, HART. 175 



The "Antiquity of Man" marks a turning-point 

 in public opinion upon the much-vexed question of 

 the duration of the human race upon the earth. An 

 able writer thus writes of it in the " Annual Kegister ' 

 for 1863 :— 



"Within the last few years the attention of 

 geologists has been called to discoveries of flint im- 

 plements and other vestiges of humanity in strata 

 containing the bones of extinct animals, such as 

 elephants and rhinoceroses, which had long been 

 supposed to belong to an epoch preceding the 

 appearance of man upon the earth. It is many years 

 since these phenomena have been noticed, and indi- 

 vidual geologists have drawn conclusions from their 

 attributing a greater antiquity to man than the six 

 thousand years commonly allowed. Philosophical 

 caution, however, prevented the great body of scien- 

 tific men from going over to this opinion, until lately, 

 when Mr. Prestwich, an eminent geologist, and Mr. 

 John Evans, a member of the Society of Antiquaries, 

 examined the gravel and sand pits at Abbeville and 

 Amiens, and the collection of M. Boucher de Perthes, 

 which that far-sighted savant had long been forming, 

 of objects discovered in those localities. The result 

 was the expression of a conviction that the flint tools 

 found in these pits had been deposited in the gravel 

 beds at their first formation, and not subsequently 

 introduced, and the conclusion followed that man 

 existed previous to the formation of these strata. 



" Many other prior discoveries of human bones and 

 remains in caves, in conjunction with those of elephants, 



