ON THE INTERMENTS OF PRIMITIVE MAN. 65 



ferent counties, when compared with one another have a 

 singular agreement in form. So much is this the case 

 that there are two or three chief forms of these drift flints 

 which agree wherever they are met with. 



During the investigations of the drift gravels, there was 

 for a long time the objection made to the vast antiquity 

 of man, which was claimed by those who asserted that 

 these rude flint implements were the work of human hands, 

 that no bones of man had been met with among these 

 deposits. This certainly was a weighty and almost inex- 

 plicable objection. But at the same time as these in- 

 vestigations were going on in the drift gravels other inquirers 

 were engaged in exploring the different limestone and other 

 caverns which occur in many parts of Europe, and in which 

 there are striking evidences of the residence of man during 

 the most remote periods, when the human race was in 

 its infancy. Besides the stone implements used by man 

 which were found in these caverns at different depths, 

 often absolutely sealed up by layers of stalagmite, some 

 of which implements corresponded very closely with those 

 from the drift gravels, there were also met with, inter- 

 mingled with the teeth and other bones of numerous ex- 

 tinct animals, such as the great cave bear, the cave lion, 

 the hya3na, the reindeer, &c., bone implements formed 

 by human hands, some of which actually have sketched 

 upon them even not unartistical drawings of extinct ani- 

 mals, such as the mammoth and lastly, most conclusive 

 of all, human skeletons. So that the old objection, which 

 led to doubts concerning the true interpretation of the 

 river gravels, is now finally and for ever disposed of. 

 Man's antiquity is carried back, without the slightest 

 ground for doubt or dispute, to periods vastly too re- 

 mote to be measured by any save geological epochs. 



F 



