554. REPORT—1883. 
perhaps, in order to show how very popular the subject became almost immediately, 
it is only necessary to state that Sir C. Lyell’s great work on the Antiquity of Man 
was published in February 1863, the second edition appeared in the following 
April, and the third followed in the succeeding November—three editions of a 
bulky scientific work in less than ten months! A fourth edition was published in 
May 1878. ; 
Few, it may be presumed, can now doubt that those who before 1858 believed 
that our fathers had under-estimated Human Antiquity, and fought for their belief, 
have at leneth obtained a victory. Nevertheless, every Anthropologist has doubt- 
less, from time to time, 
‘Heard the distant and random gun 
That the foe was sullenly firing.’ 
The ‘foe,’ to speak metaphorically, seems to consist of very irregular forces, 
occasionally unfair but never dangerous, sometimes very amusing, and frequently 
but badly armed or without any real armour. The Spartan law which fined a 
citizen heavily for going into battle unarmed was probably a very wise one. 
For example, and dropping metaphor, a pamphlet published in 1877 contains 
the following passage: ‘ With regard to all these supposed flint implements, and 
spear and arrow heads, found in various places, it may be well to mention here the 
frank confession of Dr. Carpenter. He has told us, from the Presidential Chair of 
the Royal Academy, that ‘No logical proof can be adduced that the peculiar 
shapes of these flints were given them by human hands.”’ (See Is the Book 
Wrong? A Question for Sceptics, by Hely H. A. Smith, p. 26.) The words 
ascribed to Dr. Carpenter are put within inverted commas and are the whole of 
the quotation from him. I was a good deal mystified on first reading them, for 
while it seemed likely that the President spoken of was the well-known member 
of this Association—Dr. W. B, Carpenter—it was difficult to account for his being 
in the Presidential Chair of the Royal Academy, and not easy to understand what 
the Royal Academy had to do with flint implements. A little search, however, 
showed that the Address which Dr. W. B. Carpenter delivered in 1872 from the 
Presidential Chair of, not the Royal Academy, but the British Association, con- 
tained the actual words quoted, followed immediately by others which the author 
of the pamphlet fonnd it inconvenient to include in his quotation. Dr, Carpenter, 
speaking of ‘Common Sense,’ referred, by way of illustration, to the ‘ flint imple- 
ments’ of the Abbeville and Amiens gravel-beds, and remarked: ‘ No logical proof 
can be adduced that the peculiar shapes of these flints were given to them by Human 
hands; but does any unprejudiced person now doubt it?’ (Report Brit. Assoc. 
1872, p. lxxv). Dr. Carpenter, after some further remarks on the ‘flint imple- 
ments,’ concluded his paragraph respecting them with the following words: 
‘Thus what was in the first instance a matter of discussion, has now become one of 
those “ self-evident” propositions which claim the unhesitating assent of all whose 
opinion on the subject is entitled to the least weight.’ 
Tt cannot be doubted that, taken in its entirety—that is to say, taken as every 
lover of truth and fairness should and would take it—Dr. Carpenter's paragraph 
would produce on the mind of the reader a very different effect to that likely, and 
no doubt intended, to be produced by the mutilated version of it given in the 
pamphlet. 
A second edition of the pamphlet has been given to the world. Dr. Carpenter 
is still in the Presidential Chair of the Royal Academy, and the quotation from his 
Address is as conveniently short as before. 
It would be easy to bring together a large number of similar modes of ‘ defend-. 
ing the cause of truth’—to use the words of the pamphlet just noticed—but space 
and time forbid. 
I cannot, however, forego the pleasure of introducing the following recent and 
probably novel explanation of cavern phenomena. In 1882 my attention was. 
directed to two articles, by one and the same writer, on Bone-Cave Dhenomena. 
The writer’s theme was professedly the Victoria Cave, near Settle, Yorkshire, 
