vi.] ADDRESS. 181 



long-haired rhinoceros, the mammoth, the musk sheep, 

 and the hippopotamus also formed part of the European 

 fauna ; when the climate was very different and liable to 

 great oscillations ; when our rivers had but begun to 

 excavate their valleys, and the whole condition of the 

 country must therefore have been singularly different 

 from what it is now. Gradually, however, the evidence 

 became overwhelming : the statements of Tournal and 

 Christol were confirmed by Lartet and Christy, by De 

 Vibraye and others ; those of Schmerling by Dupont ; 

 of McEnery by Vivian and Pengelly ; and at length the 

 evidence, well summed up in his work on "Cave Hunting," 

 by Mr. Boyd Dawkins, himself a successful worker in 

 this field of research, left no room for doubt. As regards 

 the Drift Gravels, M. de Perthes not only discovered 

 unmistakable flint implements in the drift gravel of the 

 Somme valley, but he convinced every one that these 

 implements really belonged to the gravels in which they 

 occurred, and he taught us to find similar implements 

 for ourselves in the corresponding strata of the river 

 systems. For the full significance, however, of these 

 facts, we are indebted to the profound geological know- 

 ledge of Mr. Prestwich ; while Mr. Evans taught us to 

 appreciate the essential characteristics which distinguish 

 the stone implements of the two periods, to which I have 

 ventured to give the names Palaeolithic and Neolithic. 



Characteristic remains of the Palaeolithic period have 

 been found in this neighbourhood by Dr. Blackmore, Mr. 

 Stevens, Mr. James Brown, and others We shall see an 

 interesting series of them when we visit the Museum. 



Whether man existed in Europe at a still earlier 

 period, in preglacial, or even, as some suppose, in miocene 



