266 
NATURE 
[JuLy 20, 1899 
physical geography of the country. There were doubts 
also as to the objects from the occurrence of which the 
presence of man was inferred, for, except in some very 
doubtful instances, it was not his bones that were found, 
but only flints roughly fashioned into serviceable instru- 
ments. A good sketch of the development of the inquiry 
appeared some years ago in Blackwood’s Magazine (vol. 
clvii., June 1895, p. 939). 
M. Boucher de Perthes had conceived the idea that so 
it must be, but it was long before he found sufficiently 
convincing evidence of the fact. At last, however, after 
Boucher de Perthes had been excavating, collecting, 
talking, and writing about it for years, Dr. Falconer 
visited him and acknowledged that a good prima facie 
case had been made out, and wrote to Prestwich to say 
that he ought to look into it. Prestwich accordingly 
made a pilgrimage to Abbeville, and came to the con- 
<lusion that there were in Boucher de Perthes’ collection 
flints which had undoubtedly been wrought by man, 
which had been found in undisturbed ground, and which 
were of the same age as the remains of the extinct 
mammalia found with them. 
Boucher de Perthes supported a good theory with 
much bad evidence, and we must bear in mind from all 
that passed then that there is need for caution in dis- 
belief as well as in belief, and it may be that Prestwich’s 
conviction may prove well-founded, that in the plateau 
gravels of Kent and Wiltshire there are flints worked by 
man of much earlier date than the palzeolithic .imple- 
ments the genuineness of which he had with so much 
skill and pertinacity established. At present, however, 
the,evidence as to these Palotaliths or Eoliths, as they 
have been called, is not quite satisfactory, for natural 
forms have been exhibited with too much confidence as 
the work of man. 
The view that there has been a great submergence of 
our island since glacial times will probably turn out to be 
correct, though it may be that the lapse of time over 
which it extended has not been rightly estimated. But 
the opinion that the phenomena could be best explained 
by submergence of such a transitory and tumultuous 
nature as to be properly called a flood will not at present 
command general acceptance. Prestwich himself seems 
to have been willing to qualify very considerably the 
statements involving the idea of a flood. 
In endeavouring to interpret the story of the later 
accumulations it was, of course, most desirable to search 
for any local conditions which tended to preserve the 
relics which were chiefly relied upon as evidence, and 
such conditions appear to be furnished by the caves 
in which are found sealed up the remains of man who 
lived or buried his dead there, of the wild beasts which 
crawled in to die, or dragged in the bones of other dead 
animals to feed upon at their leisure. 
Prestwich therefore paid much attention to the hyena 
dens and other caves discovered from time to time 
round the coast or in inland cliffs. His object was to 
establish some chronology from the associated objects, 
or make out certainly any relation between the contents 
of the caves and of the raised beaches or river terraces 
which were by degrees beginning to be understood. 
Prestwich was so impressed by the vastness of the 
NO. 1551, VOL. 60] 
changes which had taken place even during the latest 
geological ages that he began to doubt whether the 
operations of nature which we see going on around us 
were sufficient to bring about such great results, and he 
further saw evidence of more violent action in many of 
the phenomena of recent date. While not reviving the 
old cataclysmic views, he questioned the wide appli- 
cation of the uniformitarian doctrines as taught by 
Lyell ; but their views will be easily reconciled, first, by 
the doctrine that local catastrophic action is quite con- 
sistent with continuity of causation; and, secondly, by 
the admission of the inevitable effects of ever-recurring 
earth movements in hurrying up or retarding the 
operations of denudation and deposition. 
The theory that there exists an underground plateau of 
Palzeozoic rocks extending at an inconsiderable depth 
beneath the Secondary and Tertiary rocks of East 
Anglia, interfering as at Ware with the water supply, and 
raising hopes everywhere of a new source of coal supply, 
which was partly suggested by Dela Beche and put into 
shape by Godwin Austen, and which was verified at 
Harwich, Ware, London and Dover, was, of course, a 
subject of the greatest interest to Prestwich, and the pro- 
gress of the investigation was largely advanced by him. 
He was a pleasant letter writer, but as time went on he | 
seems to have confined himself more and more to the 
object for which he had taken up his pen, and that was 
generally some scientific point. His sense of humour 
was strong, but showed itself more in conversation than 
in his letters. 
At his pleasant home on the chalk hills he spent many 
happy days in later life, and there he breathed his last 
soon after Royal favour had recognised his long services 
by designating him as one of the recipients of the 
honours granted on New Year's Day 1896, 
His memoir is written in a loving spirit, and there will 
be few amongst its readers who do not entertain towards 
him that affectionate feeling of regard and respect that 
would be very ill content with any other treatment. 
METEOROLOGY, OLD AND NEW. 
Neudrucke von Schriften und Karten tiber Meteorologie 
und Erdmagnetismus. Herausgegeben von Prof. Dr. 
G. Hellmann. Wetterprognosen und Wetterberichte 
des xv. und xvi.« Jahrhunderts. (Berlin: Asher and 
Co., 1899.) 
Annals of the Astronomical Observatory of Harvard 
College. Vol. xxxix. Pp. iv +153. Part I. Peruvian 
Meteorology, 1888-1890. Compiled and prepared for 
publication by Solon I. Bailey, Assistant Professor of 
Astronomy, under the direction of Prof. E. C. 
Pickering. (Cambridge, U.S., 1899.) 
Annales de l’ Observatoire national d’ Athénes publiées. 
Par Démétrius Eginitis, Directeur de l’Observatoire. 
Tome I. Pp. xxi + 395. (Athénes: Imprimerie 
Nationale, 1898.) 
R. HELLMANWN has devoted himself with inde- 
fatigable application to the unearthing of those 
rare publications which allustrate the growth of an in- 
telligent interest in the sciences of meteorology and 
magnetism, when these subjects first attracted attention 
