200 JOSEPH PEESTWICF, P.E.S., P.G.S.j ON A POSSIBLE 



the disturbance of a bone. Is it possible to suppose that bj 

 any means these animaLs could have died by any ordinary 

 current process, and that they should have been ultimately 

 deposited under fourteen or fifteen feet of gravel, gravel which 

 does not lie along the river bed, but which, extends for hundreds 

 of miles, apparently without a break ? I hold that the wild animals 

 would have torn them asunder if exposed, and if their bones had been 

 exposed to the air they would be weathered, whereas it is not so. 



!N"ow it seems to me that this continuity of conditions is 

 consistent only with one continuous cause, whatever it may be, 

 and establishes the conclusion that the animals were drowned by 

 a great diluvian catastrophe which also spread out the beds of 

 gravel and loam for hundreds of miles as we find them. 



Then take another side of the issue, take this question you have 

 heard so much about, of Pal£eolithic and Neolithic man. It is very 

 true that early man, who did not polish the weapons he made, but 

 chipped them out with a rude stone, made it difficult in many 

 cases to distinguish as to whether a particular stone weapon was 

 m.ade at one epoch or another, but you have this remarkable and 

 extraordinary fact, that in one case you have the remains of man 

 existing with those of extinct beasts, and in another you find the 

 remains of man with the I'emains of domesticated beasts, and there 

 is never a case, out of the hundreds of caverns which have been 

 examined, where there is a mixture of these extinct beasts with 

 domestic animals. There cannot be a mistake about that; you 

 may mistake palgeolithic and neolithic stone implements, but you 

 cannot mistake the fact that the mammoth and two or three 

 other absolutely extinct beasts, have never been found mixed with 

 or intermingled with the remains of domestic beasts. Hence it 

 comes about that amongst those who have studied these palaeolithic 

 remains of man there is an almost absolute opinion, especially 

 amongst French authorities, that there was a great gap, or hiatus, 

 between one set of people and the other, notably in regard to the 

 European ai'ea, and I think the only explanation, the only cause 

 which explains the facts is that some great catastrophe, involving 

 the rush of a mass of water, must have occurred, which intervened 

 between one set of men and the other set of men. 



I am not going to prosecute this matter further. I have put 

 before you a few salient facts on this very large and interesting 

 subject, and will leave it there (applause). 



The Resolution was carried nem. con. 



