C— GEOLOGY 63 



on the advice of the geologist, and it is no less his function to taivC into 

 careful consideration in this and other connections the location of ceme- 

 teries, the methods of disposal of sewage, and the prevention of the 

 pollution of rivers. 



Apart from the problems involved in the proper location of means of 

 communication and of heavy structures, the provision of raw materials 

 used in constructional work falls largely within the geologist's province. 

 Natural road-stones and building-stones are still in great demand, 

 although they were at one time more widely used than now. At the 

 present day the geologist is called upon to provide the raw materials 

 for the making of concrete, artificial stone, bricks, and cement. Concrete 

 and the various artificial stones which are now being extensively manu- 

 factured find their analogues in the rocks, and the improvement in their 

 quality, as in that of cement, is both a geological and geochemical problem. 

 Questions of the deterioration or improvement with time of natural and 

 artificial stone, cement, bricks, and mortar are paralleled by the decay or 

 induration of rocks, a field of inquiry but little explored. 



I must ask indulgence for thus labouring the obvious, but it is appro- 

 priate from time to time to review, as my predecessors in this chair have 

 done, the services demanded from geology by the ever-increasing needs 

 of the community. It is not without relief that I turn to a contact where 

 geology is able to help in the spirit of pure investigation, that of the 

 relationship of Early Man to well-established geological phenomena. 

 Here we may well fail to see any practical applications or utilitarian 

 reward, but the discussion is none the less interesting for all that. 



The Ice Age and Early Man in Britain. 



When the British Association last met in York (in 1906), G. W. 

 Lamplugh, then President of Section C, expounded the view that, with 

 the evidence then available, he could find no proof of interglacial epochs 

 in Britain, but only of a period of continuous glaciation during which 

 ' the margins of the ice-lobes underwent extensive oscillations.' The case 

 which he presented so skilfully and with such an extensive knowledge 

 of field-phenomena and literature was difficult to answer. Further 

 data and increased knowledge of the history of Man in Britain have 

 caused most, if not all, of us to adopt the multiglacial theory. It will 

 be my task to summarise the evidence that has produced this change 

 of view from monoglacialism. 



The recent fortunate discoveries of skeletal remains of primitive 

 Man in China, Java, Palestine, and East and South Africa, remarkable 

 as they are, should not cause us to lose sight of the fact that the steady 

 advance of archaeological knowledge in this country during the past two 

 or three decades has been no less startling. Only some fifty years ago, 

 Skertchley's advocacy of the great antiquity of Man in the Fen country 

 was received with scepticism. At the present day it is recognised on 

 all hands that the rise of Man was not a post-glacial phenomenon ; 

 on the contrary, we are now certain that Man was as characteristic a 

 mammal of glacial and interglacial times as the mammoth and straight- 

 tusked elephant. The tendency to regard present-day geographical 



