1 8 The Primitive Inhabitants 



ests, a remote conjectural antiquity is commonly ascribed 

 to these simple remains. 



But it is not in the lake dwellings, or the shell 

 mounds, or the peat beds, that we are to look for the 

 primitive inhabitants of Western Europe. The archae- 

 ologist indeed goes no further. But the geologist, 

 peering beyond, descries a fossil man. Not every pet- 

 rifaction, however, is a fossil. We must define what is 

 properly meant by this term. 



The forces of nature are still at work ceaselessly 

 changing the surface of the earth. The sea eats away 

 its shores, the waves grind up the fragments, and the 

 currents bear away the debris, deposit it, and form sub- 

 marine strata. Rivers in like manner washing away 

 the soil of their valleys, create new formations. Vol- 

 canoes still scatter their ashes and lava, and dripping 

 caves sheet their floors with stalagmite. The deposits 

 formed by erosion and transportation of currents go by 

 the general name of alluvium. This name, however, is 

 particularly given to the deposits formed by streams 

 flowing in their present beds. The older alluvium, 

 resting directly upon the tertiary strata, some geolo- 

 gists ascribe to a catastrophe different from the opera- 

 tions we now witness, and which they call the diluvium 

 of the north. Hence, they call this old deposit dilu- 

 vium, and also call the era of its formation the quater- 

 nary period. Any remains, therefore, found in the 

 proper alluvium belong to history and archaeology. 

 They must be found in the diluvium, or quaternary, to 

 be ranked as fossils. 



Other geologists, noting the slow change of level 

 which is still going on in the world — some shores ris- 



