434 TROPICAL NATURE 



doubt, accusation, and ridicule, which for so many years 

 crushed down the truth with regard to Palaeolithic man? 

 One would think, as Jeremy Bentham said of another matter, 

 that it was " wicked or else unwise " to accept any evidence 

 for facts which are yet so inherently probable that the entire 

 absence of evidence for their existence ought to be felt to be 

 the greatest stumbling-block. 



No better illustration of this curious prejudice can be 

 given than the way in which some recent discoveries of stone 

 implements in deposits of considerable antiquity in India are 

 dealt with. These implements are of quartzite, and are of 

 undoubtedly human workmanship. They were found in the 

 Lower Laterite formation, which is said to have undergone 

 great denudation and to be undoubtedly very ancient. Old 

 stone circles of a great but unknown antiquity are formed of 

 it. It is also stated that the distinction between the Tertiary 

 and post -Tertiary is very difficult in India, and the age of 

 these Laterite beds cannot be determined either by fossils, 

 which are absent, or by superposition. Yet we are informed, 

 " The presence of Palaeolithic implements proves that the rock 

 is of post-Tertiary origin." l Here we have the origin of man 

 taken as fixed and certain, so certain that his remains may be 

 used to prove the age of a doubtful deposit ! Nor do these 

 indications of great antiquity stand alone, for in the Ner- 

 budda fluviatile deposits Mr. Hackel has found stone weapons 

 in situ along with eleven species of extinct fossil mammalia. 



Believing myself that the existence of man in the Tertiary 

 epoch is a certainty, and the discovery of his remains or works 

 in deposits of that age to be decidedly probable, I hold it to be 

 both wise and scientific to accept all evidence of his existence 

 before the Glacial epoch which would be held satisfactory for 

 a later period, and when there is any little doubt, to give the 

 benefit of the doubt in favour of the find rather than against 

 it. I hold further that it is equally sound doctrine to give 

 some weight to cumulative evidence ; since, when a thing is 

 not improbable in itself, it surely adds much to the argument 

 in its favour that facts which tend to prove it come from 

 many different and independent sources from those who are 

 quite ignorant of the interest that attaches to their discovery, 

 1 Manual of the Geology of India, p. 370, 



