384 DUKE OF ARGYLL. [l895. 







opinion that had taken place within the last half- 

 century respecting the age of man on the earth : it was 

 a piece of close reasoning, difficult to gainsay, on the 

 geological age of the plateau implements. The words 

 in which he summed up were : " No traces of older man 

 have been met with on our land, and though elsewhere 

 instances have been recorded, they have either proved 

 mistaken or else require confirmation. Of one thing I 

 feel satisfied, which is that in no other instance do the 

 phenomena exhibit so well as in this part of Kent the 

 successive geological stages bearing upon human occu- 

 pation of the land, and so clearly help to establish the 

 Greater Antiquity of Early Man." 



The next letter is one from the Duke of Argyll, 

 followed by its answer : 



The Duke of Argyll to J. Prestwich. 



INVERARY, April 1, 1895. 



MY DEAR MR PRESTWICH, I have been reading with great 

 interest your article on the Antiquity of Man. I have no diffi- 

 culty about your conclusions as to the human origin of the 

 flints, nor, of course, about the great submergence which is in- 

 volved in the whole of your explanation, for this agrees with 

 my own conclusions from glacial phenomena in this country. 



But there are points connected with time which are not clear 

 to me. You assume that all the existing valleys have been 

 excavated since the high-level Gravels were deposited. 



Is this quite certain ? I don't know how it is to be proved. 

 Certainly here the existing contours must have been in the main 

 the same as now before the submergence. All the phenomena 

 point to the ridges of existing hills having been shoals and reefs 

 in the Glaciation sea, and to the existence of valleys as having 

 guided the rock-bearing floe-ice. 



Of course in the re-emergence of the land there must have been 

 a tremendous " scour " from rushing waters, and this may have 



