/ 



302 / 



from many other circumstances so deeply interesting to us, \rhile it is also a, 

 matter of special good fortune for this Institute that its members have had the 

 opportunity of hearing the results of Dr. Dav/son's investigations brought 

 before them in so interesting a manner. There are some of the prepossessions 

 of the scientific mind that have been a little displaced by the facts just laid 

 before us. There has long been a notion that if we were to explore the 

 East we should find an absence of evidence of the palaeolithic period — of the 

 old flint implement period — and that during the time that was going on 

 in the western part of Pkirope there was a civilisation existing in the East 

 from which our own barbarism was, as it were, a degenerate offshoot. This 

 has, however, been entirely displaced ; and it is now quite clear that 

 the East presents the same phenomena of a rude paheolithic age as are 

 found in the West ; consequently one can no longer raise arguments on the 

 old assumption. What we have now learned also settles another negative, 

 namely, with regard to the old gravels — older than the breccia of the 

 Lebanon caves or any of our caves, — the gravel that fills the valley which 

 General Pitt Elvers has described, we may now, perhaps, regard it as proved 

 (although with the modesty of a true scientist. Dr. Dawson reserves to 

 himself the right to await and consider further evidence on the subject) that 

 the flints found there are not of human manufacture. The conclusion is 

 that there is nothing in the case in point that ought to disturb the received 

 chronology of the West ; so that we therefore have a confirmation of the 

 fact that the great mammalian epoch of the Pleistocene period was 

 developed there as well as here. There are two great stages of that period 

 — namely, the one exhibiting extinct animals, and the other or reindeer 

 stage, as shown especially in the south of France and in our own country, — 

 periods of which we have heard something from the Rev. J. M. Mello in his 

 interesting account of the Cresswell caves, and as to which we may be 

 permitted to entertain a hope that further researches in the same direction 

 will enable us to correlate the facts so as to form a system of chronology 

 which may be of service with regard to those spots left vacant in historical 

 records. There is ample room and verge enough in the written record to 

 allow for the occurrence of those facts of which we have heard to-night, 

 within the historic period. I think the Institute owes a deep debt of 

 gratitude to Dr. Dawson for having so kindly prepared for it so valuable 

 a paper containing the stores of information he has been enabled to obtain 

 in the East, because his facts not only come as the results of observation 

 made in the ordinary way, but are rendered the more valuable as coming 

 from one who, both on the American continent and this, has had abundant 

 means which he has well used of informing himself and others oia this im- 

 portant subject. 



Professor Warington W. Smyth, M.A., F.R.S., F.G.S. — I regret very much 

 that, through my own feult, I have heard very imperfectly the interesting 

 paper read to us this evening, and that therefore I am unable to respond 

 as I should like to do to the invitation profi'ered to me that I should 

 speak in regard to the numerous and curious matters that have been brought 



