570 PRIMEVAL MAX, 



XXIV. PEIMEVAL MAN, AND HIS COTEMPO- 



RARIES. 1 



Opinionum commenta delet dies, naturae jndicia confirmat. 



Cicero ' de Natura Deor.' lib. ii. cap. 2. 



. Fabricated and used by a people who bad not the use of 

 metals. . . . The situation in which these (flint) weapons were found 

 may tempt us to refer them to a very remote period indeed, even 

 beyond that of the present world. 



John Fbeke, Esq., F.K.S., F.A.S., 22nd June, 1797. 



' Archa?ologia,' 1800, vol. xiii. p. 204. 



Prefatory Note. 



The author feels that he comes before the public at great 

 disadvantage with the present work. He is late in making 

 his appearance in a field in which he has been preceded by 

 a digest of the whole subject, produced by a philosophical 

 writer of high eminence and authority. But he has con- 

 fidence that men of science, and educated readers of all 

 classes, will take an interest in knowing from one of the 

 practical observers the steps by which the now generally 

 accepted belief in the remote antiquity of the human race 

 has been led up to its present advanced condition ; and that 

 they will not be indifferent to a narrative of the labours of 

 those who have pursued the inquiry alike through bad and 

 good repute, and who have contributed to it the greatest 

 impulse. For in casting a retrospective glance on the history 

 of any great question concerning the advancement of human 

 knowledge, with a view of awarding to each inquirer his 

 due share of desert, we must revert to the state in which the 

 subject was when they successively struck us. Once fairly 

 launched and accredited, the evidence with the conviction 

 founded upon it accumulates, like a snow-ball when set in 

 motion. The present work is intended mainly pour servir, 

 in the history of science, as a vindication of the part taken 

 by the author and his friends, M. Boucher de Perthes and 

 Mr. Prestwich, in the investigation of the remote antiquity 

 of the human race upon the palaeontological and geological 

 evidence. 



1 The following important historical | proofs of the remote antiquity of the 

 Essay was written in 1863, and was human race, and the physical condition 

 intended as an introduction to a distinct I of the earth's crust prior to, and at the 

 work with the above title, the object of ; date of, man's first appearance. — [Ed.] 

 which was to set forth the physical [ 



