GENERAL NATURE OF THE SUBJECT 13 



scanty relics of primeval man, much as the geologist 

 searches in the bedded rocks for the fossils which 

 they contain. He has even learned to use for these 

 earliest ages the term prehistoric, and so practically 

 to transfer them to the domain of the archaeologist 

 and geologist. 



It is evident, therefore, that if we seek for the 

 meeting-place of geology and history, we shall find 

 not a mere point or line of contact, but a series of 

 such points, and even a complicated splicing together 

 of different threads of investigation, which it may be 

 difficult to disentangle, and which the geological 

 specialist alone, or the historical specialist alone, may 

 be unable fully to understand. The object of this 

 little volume will be to unravel as many as possible 

 of these threads of contact, and to make their value 

 and meaning plain to the general reader, so that he 

 may not, on the one hand, blindly follow mere 

 assertions and speculations, or, on the other, fail to 

 appreciate ascertained and weighty facts relating to 

 this great and important matter of human origins. 



This is the more necessary since, even in works 

 of some pretension, there are tendencies on the one 

 hand to overlook geological evidence in favour of 

 written records, or even of conjectural hypotheses, 

 and on the other to reject all early historical testi- 

 mony or tradition as valueless. We shall find that 

 neither of these extremes is conducive to accurate 

 conclusions. Researches of a geologico-historical 

 character necessarily also bring us in view of the 



