EXPLANATORY AND INTRODUCTQ&Y. 11 



mammotli or extinct European elephant may not have 

 disappeared. 



But a still earlier Stone period, that more properly 

 named the Palaeolithic, appears to be indicated by 

 quantities of roughly-shaped flint implements found in 

 the valley of the Somme, at Hoxne in Suffolk, and 

 many other places, imbedded in clays and gravels of 

 the river-beds, and in the earth and stalagmite of 

 caverns along with remains of extinct mammals ; * but 

 as yet without any human bones. If these remains 

 truly indicate a primitive Stone period of rough imple- 

 ments only, then man must have inhabited Europe 

 before some of the later changes in its physical geo- 

 graphy, at a time when the European land was more 

 extensive than now, when many large mammals now 

 extinct still lived, and before the great movements 

 of subsidence which have brought the European conti- 

 nent to its present form. 



For reasons to be stated in the sequel, however, it 

 is doubtful if there really was a distinct Palaeolithic 

 period, properly so called. Many of the so-called im- 

 plements are probably natural, and the manner in 

 which they are found renders it possible that those 

 actually fabricated by man belonged merely to special 

 stations of tribes who may have had other and better 

 implements elsewhere. Still there seems to be evi- 

 dence of the existence of the earlier Flint folk before 

 the disappearance of the great Post-pliocene mammals 

 now extinct, and before the last great subsidence or 

 * " Story of the Earth and Man," 1873. 



