ADDRESS. 1 1 



discoveries of the remains of human art in beds of Tertiary date ; and I 

 need not here go further into the question. Suffice it to say that I see no 

 reason why the verdict of ' not proven ' at which I then arrived should be 

 reversed. 



In the case of a more recent discovery in Upper Burma in beds at 

 first pronounced to be Upper Miocene, but subsequently ' definitely 

 ascertained to be Pliocene,' some of the flints are of purely natural and 

 not artificial origin, so that two questions arise : first, Were the fossil 

 remains associated with the worked flints or with those of natural forms ? 

 And second, Were they actually found in the bed to which they have 

 been assigned, or did they merely lie together on the surface 1 



Even the Pithecanthropus erectus of Dr. Eugene Dubois from Java 

 meets with some incredulous objectors from both the physiological and the 

 geological sides. From the point of view of the latter the difficulty lies 

 in determining the exact age of what are apparently alluvial beds in the 

 bottom of a river valley. 



When we return to Paleolithic man, it is satisfactory to feel that we 

 are treading on comparatively secure ground, and that the discoveries of 

 the last forty years in Britain alone enable us to a great extent to recon- 

 stitute his history. We may not know the exact geological period when 

 first he settled in the British area, but we have good evidence that he 

 occupied it at a time when the configuration of the surface was entirely 

 difierent from what it is at present : when the river valleys had not been 

 cut down to anything like their existing depth, when the fauna of the 

 country was of a totally difierent character from that of the present day, 

 when the extension of the southern part of the island seaward was in 

 places such that the land was continuous with that of the continent, and 

 when in all probability a far more rainy climate prevailed. We have 

 proofs of the occupation of the country by man during the long lapse of 

 time that was necessary for the excavation of the river valleys. We have 

 found the old fioors on which his habitations were fixed, we have been 

 able to trace him at work on the manufacture of fiint instruments, and by 

 building up the one upon the other the fiakes struck off by the primaeval 

 workman in those remote times we have been able to reconstruct the 

 blocks of flint which served as his material. 



That the duration of the Palfeolithic Period must have extended over 

 an almost incredible length of time is sufficiently proved by the fact that 

 valleys, some miles in width and of a depth of from 100 to 150 feet, have 

 been eroded since the deposit of the earliest implement-bearing beds. Nor 

 is the apparent duration of this period diminished by the consideration 

 that the floods which hollowed out the valleys were not in all probability 

 of such frequent occurrence as to teach Palaeolithic man by experience 

 the danger of settling too near to the streams, for had he kept to the 

 higher slopes of the valley there would have been but little chance of his 

 implements having so constantly formed constituent parts of the gravels 

 deposited by the floods. 



