Sir John Evans, K.C.B. 3 



The change in public opinion in this country was no doubt largely- 

 due to the results obtained by the systematic investigation of Brixham 

 Cave, near Torquay, commenced in 1858 under the direction of 

 a Committee of the Geological Societj% upon which John Evans served, 

 with Prestwich, Falconer, Ramsay, and Busk, the actual carrying out 

 of the work in the cave being entrusted to William Pengelly. 



His subsequent exploration of Kent's Cavern, Torquay, initiated 

 by Sir Charles Lyell, when President of the British Association in 

 Bath (1864), and carried on for years by a powerful committee on 

 which John Evans served as an active member, assisted largely to 

 justify the conclusions arrived at by men of science generally, that 

 prehistoric man was living in Britain and in France contemporaneously 

 with the large extinct Mammalia, the Mammoth, the JVJ achserodus, 

 the B-hinoceros, Hippopotamus, Cave Lion, Bear, and Hyaena, and 

 such now existing northern forms as the Reindeer, Musk Sheep, and 

 the Asiatic Saiga Antelope. 



Most valuable, among Air. Evans' many services to science, has been 

 his endeavour to tide over the gap between the Prehistoric and Historic 

 periods of mankind, and to emphasize the importance of the 

 Quaternary period in geology. He has also established for us 

 a correct chronological succession of periods of time represented by 

 the various discoveries of the implements and objects made by pre- 

 historic man, which clearly indicate that gradual progress from the 

 most barbaric savage whose weapons of stone were rudely chipped, 

 and neither ground nor polished ; until, as he advanced in intelligence 

 and skill, we meet with a class of implements which after being 

 fashioned by chipping have been ground or polished at their edges 

 only, and again still further with those which are more or less ground 

 or polished, not only at the edge, but over the entire surface. 



The rudest forms of implements are classed as belonging to the 

 " River- drift Period," the Palaeolithic age, and are associated with the 

 Mammoth and the Tichorhine Rhinoceros. Following on these we 

 have the men of the Reindeer and Cave Period, with implements 

 rather better finished, and, as a hunter-people, largely using harpoons 

 and arrowheads of bone skilfully carved. Later, in the Neolithic 

 Period, we find the makers of polished stone weapons with ground 

 edges. Even in the subsequent Bronze Period that valuable alloy was 

 also accompanied by highly finished stone axes, many being perforated 

 and made in graceful forms.' 



1 The discussion of the various discoveries relating to prehistoric times, and the 

 antiquity of the human race and the evidence bearing upon it, will be found in a long 

 series of admirable Presidential Addresses to the British Association, Ethnological 

 Section, Liverpool, 1870 ; to the Geological Section, Dublin, 1878 ; to the Anthropo- 

 logical Section, Leeds, 1890 ; as President of the British Association, Toronto, 

 1897-98 ; in 1861 in a lecture to working men at the Southampton Meeting ; in an 

 address to the Watford Natural History Society, 8th February, 1877 ; and as President 

 of the Geological Society, 19th February, 1875. For an account of the flint 

 implements in the Drift, see Archceologia, 1860 and 1862. There is an admirable 

 paper on Bone and Cave-deposits of the Reindeer Period in the Quart. Journ. Geol. 

 Soc, 1864, p. 444 (abstract), and Reliquiae Aquitanicse, 1875, p. 161 seq., and the 

 subject is fully treated in Sir John Evans's " Ancient Stone Implements, Weapons, 

 and Ornaments of Great Britain," 8vo (1872, and 2nd edition, 1897). 



