462 Notices of Memoirs — 



manufactured by the same hands. These occurred over large areas in 

 France under similar conditions to those that prevailed in England. 

 The same forms had been discovered in the ancient river gravels of 

 Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Some few had been recorded from the 

 North of Africa, and analogous types occurred in considerable 

 numbers in the south of that continent. On the banks of the Nile, 

 many hundreds of feet above its present level, implements of the 

 European types had been discovered ; while in Somali-land, in an 

 ancient river valley at a great elevation above the sea, Mr. Setou- 

 Karr had collected a large number of implements formed of flint and 

 quartzite, which, judging from their form and character, might have 

 been dug out of the drift deposits of the Somme or the Seine, the 

 Thames or the ancient Solent. 



In the valley of the Euphrates implements of the same kind had 

 also been found, and again farther east in the Lateritic deposits of 

 Southern India they have been obtained in considerable numbers. 



Was this not a case in which the imagination might be fairly 

 invoked in aid of science ? Might we not from these data attempt 

 in some degree to build up and reconstruct the early history of the 

 human family ? There, in Eastern Asia, in a ti-opical climate, with 

 the means of subsistence readily at hand, might we not picture to 

 ourselves our earliest ancestors gradually developing from a lowly 

 origin, acquiring a taste for hunting, if not indeed being driven to 

 protect themselves from the beasts around them, and evolving the 

 more complicated forms of tools or weapons from the simpler flakes 

 ■which had previously served them as knives ? Might we not 

 imagine that, when once the stage of civilization denoted by these 

 Palaeolithic implements had been reached, the game for the hunter 

 became scarcer, and that his life in consequence assumed a more 

 nomad character ? Then, and possibly not till then, might a series 

 of migrations to " fresh woods and pastures new " not unnaturally 

 have ensued, and these following the usual course of " westward 

 towards the setting sun " might eventually lead to a PalEeolithic 

 population finding its way to the extreme borders of Western 

 Europe, where we found such numerous traces of its presence. 



How long a term of years might be involved in such a migration 

 it was impossible to say, but that such a migration took place the 

 phenomena seemed to justify us in believing. 



As yet, our records of discoveries in India and Eastern Asia were 

 but scanty ; but it was there that the traces of the cradle of the 

 human race were, in his opinion, to be sought, and possibly future 

 discoveries might place upon a more solid foundation the visionary 

 structure he had ventured to erect. 



It might be worth while to carry their speculations rather further, 

 and to consider the relations in time between the Palaeolithic and 

 the Neolithic Periods. 



