228 AGE OF MAN TREGLACIAL, chap. xii. 



to the boulder clay, Xo. 4, pp. 213 and 224. The position 

 of the Hoxne flint implements corresponds with that of the 

 JMundesley beds, from a to d, p. 224, and the most hkely 

 stratum in which to find hereafter flint tools is no doubt the 

 gravel a of that section which has all the appearance of an 

 old river-bed. No flint tools have yet been observed there; 

 but had the old alluvium of Amiens or Abbeville occurred 

 in the Norfolk cliffs instead of the valley of the Sommo, and 

 had we depended on the waves of the sea instead of the labor 

 of many hundred workmen continued for twenty years, for 

 exposing the flint implements to view, we might have re- 

 mained ignorant to this day of the fossil relics brought to 

 light b3']VI. Boucher de Perthes and those who have followed 

 up his researches. 



Neither ne^d we despair of one day meeting with the signs 

 of man's existence in the forest bed No. 3, or in the overlying 

 strata 3', on the ground of any uncongeniality in the climate 

 or incongruity in the state of the animate creation with the 

 well-being of our species. For the present we must be con- 

 tent to wait and consider that we have made no investigations 

 which entitle us to wonder that the bones or stone weapons 

 of the era of the Elephas meridionalis have failed to come to 

 light. If any such lie hid in those strata, and should here- 

 after be revealed to us, they would carry back the antiquity 

 of man to a distance of time probably more than twice as 

 great as that which separates our era from that of the most 

 ancient of the tool-bearing gravels yet discovered in Picardy, 

 or elsewhere. But even then the reader will perceive that 

 the age of man, though preglacial, would be so modern in 

 the great geological calendar, as given at p. 7, that he would 

 scarcely date so far back as the commencement of the post- 

 phoccne period. 



