I] INTRODUCTORY 3 



the hill on which stands Dover Castle, and gaze 

 upon Cape Grisnez, let the waters beneath you 

 disappear ; across the chalk that once spanned the 

 channel like a bridge men walked from the white 

 cliff that marks the horizon to where you stand. 

 No arithmetical chronology can spur the imagination 

 to flights like thesed).' On the other hand, the 

 use in some country districts in Britain of spindles 

 almost identical with instruments used in spinning 

 by the ancient Egyptians, and similar survivals 

 described by the author of a book entitled The 

 Past in the Present(2), bring- within the range 

 of our vision an early phase of the historic era. 

 The rude implements still fashioned by the flint- 

 knappers of Brandon in Suffolk connect the present 

 with the Palaeolithic age. Measured from the 

 standpoint of historic reckoning, survivals from 

 prehistoric days appeal to us as persistent types 

 which have remained unchanged in a constantly 

 changing world. 



In one of his essays Weismann quotes an old 

 German saying with regard to comparative longevity, 

 which asserts that *a wren lives three years, a dog 

 three times as long as a wren ' and so on in a regu- 

 larly ascending series : the life of a deer is estimated 

 at three times that of a crow and an oak three times 

 that of a deer, which means that, computed on this 

 basis, an oak lives nearly 20,000 years (3) ! This 



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