276 
ated with the worked flints or with those 
of natural forms? And second, were they 
actually found in the bed to which they 
have been assigned, or did they merely lie 
together on the surface? 
Even the Pithecanthropus erectus of Dr. 
Eugéne Dubois from Java meets with some 
incredulous objectors from both the physio- 
logical and the geological sides. From the 
point of view of the latter the difficulty 
lies in determining the exact age of what 
are apparently alluvial beds in the bottom 
of a river valley. é 
When we return to Paleolithic man it 
is satisfactory to feel that we are treading 
on comparatively secure ground, and that 
the discoveries of the last forty years in 
Britain alone enable us to a great extent 
to reconstitute his history. We may not 
know the exact geological period when first 
he settled in the British area, but we have 
good evidence that he occupied it at a time 
when the configuration of the surface was 
entirely different from what it is at present ; 
when the river valleys had not been cut 
down to anything like their existing depth ; 
when the fauna of the country was of a 
totally different character from that of the 
present day; when the extension of the 
southern part of the island seaward was in 
places such that the land was continuous 
with that of the continent, and when in 
all probability a far more rainy climate 
prevailed. We have proofs of the occupa- 
tion of the country by man during the long 
lapse of time that was necessary for the 
excavation of the river valleys. We have 
found the old floors on which his habita- 
tions were fixed; we have been able to 
trace him at work on the manufacture of 
flint instruments, and by building up the 
one upon the other the flakes struck off 
by the primeval workman in those remote 
times we have been able to reconstruct the 
blocks of flint which served as his material. 
That the duration of the Paleolithic 
SCIENCE. 
[N. 8. Von. VI. No. 138. 
Period must have extended over an almost 
incredible length of time is sufficiently 
proved by the fact that valleys, some miles 
in width and of a depth of from 100 to 
150 feet, have been eroded since the deposit 
of the earliest implement-bearing beds. 
Nor is the apparent duration of this period 
diminished by the consideration that the 
floods which’ hollowed out the valleys were 
not in all probability of such frequent oc- 
currence as to teach Paleolithic man by 
experience the danger of settling too near 
to the streams, for had he kept to the 
higher slopes of the valley there would 
have been but little chance of his imple- 
ments having so constantly formed con- 
stituent parts of the gravels deposited by 
the floods. 
The examination of British cave-deposits. 
affords corroborative evidence of this ex- 
tended duration of the Paleolithic Period. 
In Kent’s Cavern, at Torquay, for instance, 
we find in the lowest deposit, the breccia 
below the red cave-earth, implements of 
flint and chert corresponding, in all respects, 
with those of the high level and most an- 
cient river gravels. In the cave-earth these 
are scarcer, though implements occur which 
also have their analogues in the river de- 
posits; but, what is more remarkable, har- 
poons of reindeer’s horn and needles of 
bone are present, identical in form and 
character with those of the caverns of the 
Reindeer Period in the south of France, 
and suggestive of some bond of union or 
identity of descent between the early trog- 
lodytes, whose habitations were geograph- 
ically so widely separated the one from the 
other. 
In a cavern at Creswell Crags, on the 
confines of Derbyshire and Nottingham- 
shire, a bone has, moreover, been found 
engraved with a representation of parts of 
a horse in precisely the same style as the 
engraved bones of the French caves. 
It is uncertain whether any of the river- 
