30 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY 



with a hypothetical idea of necessarily progressive 

 improvement. Let us hope that the existence of 

 European pliocene man will be established, and that 

 he will be found to have been not of low and bestial 

 type, but, as the discoveries above referred to if 

 genuine would indicate, a worthy progenitor of modern 

 races of men. 



It still remains to inquire whether man may have 

 made his appearance at the close of the pliocene or 

 in the early stages of the pleistocene, before the full 

 development of the glacial conditions of that period. 

 Perhaps the most important indications of this kind 

 are those adduced by Dr. Mourlon, of the Geological 

 Survey of Belgium, 1 from which it would appear that 

 worked flints and broken bones of animals occur in 

 deposits, the relations of which would indicate that 

 they belong either to the base of the pleistocene or 

 close of the pliocene. They are imbedded in sands 

 derived from eocene and pliocene beds, and supposed 

 to have been remanie by wind action. With the mo- 

 desty of a true man of science, Mourlon presents his 

 facts, and does not insist too strongly on the important 

 conclusion to which they seem to tend, but he has 

 certainly established the strongest case yet on record 

 for the existence of tertiary man. With this should, 

 however, be placed the facts adduced in a similar sense 

 by Prestwich in his paper on the worked flints of 

 Ightham. 2 



1 Bulletin de F Academic Royale de Belgique, 1889. 



* Journal of the Geological Society ', London, May 1889. 



