20 



It is not on an isolated ease of this sort, but on a collection 

 of such cases more or less similar from different parts of the 

 world, that the claim to the high antiquity of man upon the 

 ■^arth is made by scientific men. To state the actual age of 

 the old implement-bearing bed on the bank of the Buffalo is 

 beyond our power. But while on this point I cannot refrain 

 from quoting Sir Charles Lyell on the probable age of the oldest 

 implement-bearing gravel of the Somme. In doing so I do not 

 wish to claim for the opinion, any more than the author would 

 himself, anything but a certain speculative value. Yet from the 

 most brilliant geologist the world has yet known, even a 

 .speculative opinion of this sort must have some weight. Sir 

 Charles Lyell, on data which we have not here space to discuss, 

 esthnated the age of the Mississippi Delta as being about 100,000 

 years ; and he considered that " the alluvium of the Somme 

 3ontaining flint implements and the remains of the mammoth 

 and hyaena" was no less ancient. Whatever the anticjuity of 

 the oldest Somme implements may be, there can be little doul)t 

 that those forming the oldest implement bearing beds of the 

 Buffalo are fully as old if indeed, as there are good reasons for 

 believing, they are not considerably older. For while the 

 Somme a large constantly flowing river has had a chalk forma- 

 tion through which to cut its bed, the Buffalo with a stream not 

 one twentieth part its volume has had to wear its way through 

 two miles of solid greenstone rock. To cut a channel to the 

 depth of seventy feet under the latter set of circumstances is on 

 the face of it a far greater task than to cut one to the depth of 

 one hundred feet under the former. 



Such then is the history of these implements as far as I 

 have been able to interpret it. For such opinions as I have 

 offered I have endeavoured as clearly as possible to furnish full 

 data, while my motive throughout has been a desire to arrive 

 at a true understanding of the question rather than to support 



