THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 33 



If the alleged discovery of Mr. Skertchley, an officer of the 

 English Geological Survey, cari be clearly demonstrated, viz : find- 

 ing flint implements in beds formed before the close of the glacial 

 period at Brandon, Suffolk, it may be doubted whether my stone 

 implement may not be of far greater antiquity than was at first sup- 

 posed. 



Referring to Mr. Skertchley's find, a correspondent of the 

 London Times states, " One implement was picked out of the beds 

 in a pit at Culford, Suffolk, two others were dug out of like beds at 

 Botany Bay, on the Norfolk side of Brandon. It was not until Mr. 

 Skertchley himself found another implement at Culford, and saw the 

 boulder clay above the beds from which he extracted it, that the 

 importance of the discovery dawned on him. 



Alongside " the Culford implement " he found a deposit of 

 broken and scraped Mammalion bones and " fresh water " shells ; 

 these bones were all in a circumscribed area. Underneath the 

 bones the clay was found to be burned. Mr. Skertchley's explana- 

 tion is that we have here preserved the solitary instance in the whole 

 world of a camping ground of Palseolithic men, and the camping 

 ground occurred below the boulder clay which belonged to the 

 earliest part of the glacial period. 



In the coal shale of Wezicon, Switzerland, it is said a series of 

 pointed fir poles, covered with wicker-work, have been found ; they 

 are supposed to be the most ancient evidence of the existence of 

 man, and belonging to the period intervening between the two 

 glacial epochs. 



I am aware that a still greater antiquity is claimed for man on 

 this continent. Professor Whitney supposes the now famous Cala- 

 veros Skull (found in auriferous gravels, in the West) to be of the 

 Pliocene age ; but a recent writer. Professor H. Haynes, well re- 

 marks, " In the Pliocene age we cannot expect to find traces of man 

 upon the earth, as the living placental mammals had only then 

 begun to appear." Has not this still greater force when applied to 

 the Miocene, a yet older age. The recent origin of man has been 

 well urgedj says Sir William Dawson, by Le Coute : " Some Mesa- 

 zric protozoa still survive, so do many tertrary moUasks, but the 

 mammals are of much less duration. No living species goes back 

 further than the ' Pliocene,' few extend further than the ' Glacial * 

 age." 



