148 THE ICE AGE IN CANADA. 



the post-glacial continental period, and that he survived 

 the great depressions and fluctuations of land which closed 

 that period and destroyed so many land animals his con- 

 temporaries in early times. Many observers, however (as 

 Capellini, Whitney, Harvey, Habenecht, etc.), have adduced 

 evidence more or less doubtful of the existence of man in 

 the " first continental period," that of the later Pliocene. 

 Perhaps the most convincing evidence of such antiquity yet 

 adduced is that by Dr. Mourlon, of the Geological Survey 

 of Belgium,* from which it would appear that worked flints 

 and broken bones of animals occur in deposits, the rela- 

 tions of which would indicate that they belong either to 

 the base of the Pleistocene or close of the Pliocene. 

 They are imbedded in sands derived from Eocene and 

 Pliocene beds, and supposed to have been remanti by wind 

 action. With the modesty of a true man of science, 

 Mourlon presents his facts, and does not insist too strongly 

 on the important conclusion to which they seem to tend, 

 but he has certainly established the strongest case yet on 

 record for the existence of Tertiary man. With this 

 should, however, be placed the facts adduced in a similar 

 sense by Prestwich in his paper on the worked flints of 

 Ightham.-f- 



Should this be established, the curious result will follow 

 that man must have been the witness of two great conti- 

 nental subsidences, that of the early Pleistocene and the 

 early modern, the former of which, and perhaps the latter 

 also, must have been accompanied with a great access of 

 cold in the Northern Hemisphere. It seems, however, 

 more likely that the facts will be found to admit of a 

 different explanation. 



* Bull, de 1'Academie Roy. de Belgique, 1889. 

 f Journal London Geological Society, May, 1889. 



