598 SCIENTIFIC RECREATIONS. 



from the sea, was again covered with ice, and many parts of Europe were 

 devastated by immense glaciers that of the Rhone extending for more than 

 two hundred miles. Then came vegetation as the ice gave way, and 

 luxuriance of the tropics reigned ; more cold after that, then more heat, till 

 the ice was finally driven to its mountain fastnesses, and " Britain for the 

 last time became continental. Neolithic man came upon the scene ; his 

 palaeolithic predecessor had, as far as Britain and northern Europe are con- 

 cerned, vanished for ever." The inquiry respecting the arrival and presence 

 of man in Britain would lead us too far in pursuit. The fact has been 

 established that man was living in the Thames valley while tropical animals 

 were in the country, and he has been classed by Professor Boyd-Dawkins 

 amongst the mid-pleistocene mammalia, and at that distant period, man as 

 man, and not as an intermediate form connecting the human race with the 

 lower animals, was present in Europe. 



The stone implements which have been found in river beds and in 

 caverns, associated with the bones of various animals, such as the elephant, 

 rhinoceros, hyaena, bear, and others prove this. These very ancient and rudely- 

 fashioned implements have been divided into two classes, the Palaeolithic 

 and the Neolithic, by Sir John Lubbock. First the stone implements were 

 used, and stone was superseded by bronze and iron. Then we come to the 

 historic period. In the neolithic period we find stone implements in the 

 lake dwellings of Switzerland and Constance (as well as the Lake of 

 Neuchatel), all of which have lately developed many treasures. Bronze tools 

 have also been found, and so the gradual progress of man as a fashioner of 

 weapons can be traced from age to age. 



From the " river-drift " man we descend to the cave-man, who is 

 supposed to have been identical with the Esquimaux. When Britain 

 became an island the cave-man seems to have disappeared from our 

 country, and in the prehistoric age the earliest of the present inhabitants 

 came here, and brought with them domestic animals ; then the Celts of 

 the bronze age, and then the iron. The wild beasts gradually disappeared, 

 and domestic ones occupied their places under civilized conditions.* 



So we come from the " Glacial period " to the open door of history 

 through the antechamber of the prehistoric time. 



The prehistoric is the arbitrary division between the post-pliocene or 

 pleistocene and the known "historic" periods of the world's history, and 

 we must dismiss it with a few general remarks, for the changes which we 

 have attempted to follow are still taking place in the earth ; volcanoes and 

 earthquakes are unsettling the strata, and adding to the physical and 

 geographical record which will some day have to be written by posterity 

 and future geologists. We can see in those prehistoric times traces of men 

 (hunters and fishers) existing with difficulty, mayhap, in the midst of 

 enormous quadrupeds, and fighting for existence with the bears and many 



See Dawkins' " Early Man in Britain." 



