ADDRESS. lxi 



tions, and correspond probably to tbe period of tbe true Helvetii, who quitted 

 their home and contended with Caesar for richer settlements in Gaul. The 

 people of whom these are the traces on almost every lake in Switzerland are 

 recognized as well in the ancient lake-basins of Lombardy and among the 

 Tyrolean Alps, and further on the north side of the mountains ; and probably 

 fresh discoveries may connect them with the country of the Sarmatians and 

 the Scythians. 



Thus at length is fairly opened, for archaeology and palaeontology to read, 

 a new chapter of the world's histoiy, which begins in the pleistocene periods 

 of geology, and reaches to the prehistoric ages of man. Did our ancestors 

 really contend, as the poets fancied*, with stones and clubs against the lion 

 and the rhinoceros, and thus expel them from their native haunts, or have 

 they been removed by change of climate or local physical conditions ? Was 

 the existence of the hyena and the elephant only possible in Western Europe 

 while a climate prevailed there such as now belongs to Africa or India ? and 

 was this period of high temperature reduced in a later time for the elk, rein- 

 deer, and musk ox, which undoubtedly roamed over the hills of England and 

 France? If we think so, what a vista of long duration stretches before us, for no 

 such changes of climate can be supposed to have occurred except as the effect of 

 great physical changes, requiring a lapse of many thousands of years. And 

 though we may think such changes of climate not proved, and probably 

 careful weighing of evidence may justify our disbelief, still, if the valleys in 

 Picardy have been excavated since the deposit of the gravel of St. Acheulf, 

 and the whole face of the country has been altered about the caverns of 

 Torquay since they received remains of animals and traces of man J — how 

 can we admit these facts and yet refuse the time required for their accomplish- 

 ment '? First, let us be sure of the facts, and especially of that main fact 

 upon which all the argument involving immensity of time really turns, viz. 

 the contemporaneous existence of man with the mammoth of the plains and 

 the bear of the caverns. The remains of men are certainly buried with those 

 of extinct quadrupeds ; but did they live in the same days, or do we see relics 

 of different periods gathered into one locality by natural processes of a later 

 date, or confused by the operations of men ? 



Before replying finally to these qiuvstions, further researches of an exact 

 kind are desirable, and the Association has given its aid towards them, both in 

 respect to the old cavern of Kent's Hole, and the newly opened fissure of 

 Gibraltar, from which we expect great results, though the best of our la- 

 bourers has ceased from his honourable toil§. When these and many other 

 researches are completed, some future Lyell, if not our own great geologist, 

 may add some fresh chapters to the ' Antiquity of Man.' 



In judging of this antiqiuty, in counting the centuries which may have 

 elapsed since smoothed flints fitted with handles of wood were used as chisels 

 and axes by the earliest people of Scandinavia or Helvetia, and flakes of flint 

 were employed to cleanse the skins of the reindeer in the caves of the Dor- 

 dogne, or stronger tools broke up the ice in the valley of the Somme, we 

 must be careful not to take what is the mark of low civilization for the indi- 

 cation of very remote time. In every country, among every race of men, 



* Lucretius, v. 964-1283. 



t Prestwich, Transactions of the Royal Society, 1860, and Proc. of Roy. Inst., Feb. 

 1864. 



X Pengelly, Reports of the British Association, 1864. 



§ The late Dr. Hugh Falconer, whose knowledge of the fossil animals of caves was re- 

 markably exact, took a great share in these examinations. 



