Sir H. H. Howorth—The Earliest Traces of Man. 341 



Transactions. This made the position so clear and patent that the 

 pendulum, which had been obstinately pointed to the recency of 

 man, swayed right over, and the great mass of scientific men accepted 

 what they had previously refused to credit. 



It must be remembered by all those who turn to this famous 

 memoir that its authors proved nothing whatever new. Their 

 conclusions were those which had been arrived at by Tournal 

 and Christol, by Schmerling and McEnery, long before. They 

 merely stamped with a kind of official sanction what ought to have 

 been generally received before. 



The memoir in question, however, gave a great impetus to the 

 inquirjf about early man in Europe, and the credit of the next step 

 in the enquiry is due to Lord Avebury (then Sir John Lubbock) 

 and Professor Dawkins. It was Professor Dawkins, I believe, 

 who first definitely showed that there was a gap in the history of 

 early man, which was indexed and measured by a very important 

 palfeontological fact, namely, that of the separate coexistence of man 

 with extinct animals and his coexistence with domesticated animals, 

 the remains of the two sets of beasts never overlapping so far as 

 we know. This remains the real touchstone separating the earliest 

 known men in Europe from their successors. 



Sir John Lubbock completed Professor Dawkins' distinction by 

 giving a special name to each section of early man. The men who 

 lived with the extinct beasts and used roughly chipped tools and 

 weapons he styled Palfeolithic, while those who used finely chipped 

 or polished weapons and tools and had domesticated animals he 

 called Neolithic. 



After this mapping of the general problem a vast deal of work 

 was done in many countries defining the geographical area where 

 Palaeolithic man lived, and describing his mode of life and sur- 

 roundings, and among those who worked most assiduously in this 

 behalf none have earned our gratitude more than Messrs. Christy 

 and Lartet. 



A great problem still remained to be solved, which involves 

 a polemic, though one in which the strugglers on the old platform 

 are becoming fewer and fewer. This is the question whether 

 Palaeolithic mtin lived before or after the distribution of the Drift ; 

 on this question I have myself written a good deal, and in a large 

 work to be shortly published have tried to condense a vast mass 

 of evidence justifying those geologists, and I believe they are now 

 the large majority, who hold that Palaeolithic man lived before the 

 distribution of the Drift, and that the great gap, which is recognized 

 by everyone, between Palfeolithic and Neolithic man is coincident 

 with that distribution and in all probability connected with it. 



In quite recent years a further step has been taken which I believe 

 will be eventually justified. The period before the Drift, which is 

 specially marked by the presence of two elephants— E. antiqnus 

 and primigeniiis — was, I believe, perfectly continuous with that 

 known as the Forest Bed, and marked by the presence of a special 

 fossil elephant known as K meridionalis. The two were, I believe, 



