19i THE STONE AGE — PAST AND ^RESENT. 



antiquarian fact and argument brought forward in Sir Ctarles 

 LyelFs 'Antiquity of Man/ not only with reference to the men 

 of the drift period^ but to those of the bone caves, and of the 

 early shell-heaps and peat-bogs. But it may be remarked that 

 geological evidence, though capable of showing the lapse of vast 

 periods of time, has scarcely admitted of these periods being 

 brought into definite chronological terms ; yet it is only geolo- 

 gical evidence that has given any basis for determining the 

 absolute date at which the makers of the drift implements lived 

 in France and England. In an elaborate paper lately pub- 

 lished, Mr. Prestwich infers, from the time it must have taken 

 to excavate the river-valleys, even under conditions much more 

 favourable than now to such action, and to bore into the under- 

 lying strata the deep pipes or funnels now found lined with 

 sand and gravel, that a very long period must have elapsed 

 since the implement-bearing beds began to be laid down. But 

 his opinion is against extreme estimates, and favours the view 

 that the now undoubted contemporaneity of man with the mam- 

 moth, the Wunoccros tichorhinus, etc., is rather to be accounted 

 for by considering that the great animals continued to live to a 

 later period than had been supposed, than that the age of man 

 on earth is to be stretched to fit with an enormous hypothetical 

 date. Mr. Prestwich thus sums up his view of the subject, 

 " That we must greatly extend our present chronology with 

 respect to the first existence of man appears inevitable ; but 

 that we should count by hundreds of thousands of years is, I am 

 convinced, in the present state of the inquiry, unsafe and pre- 

 mature.^'^ 



A set of characteristic drift implements' would consist of 

 certain tapering instruments hke huge lance-heads, shaped, 

 edged, and pointed, by taking off a large number of facets, in 

 a way which shows a good deal of skill and feeling for sym- 

 metry ; smaller leaf-shaped instruments ; flints partly shaped 

 and edged, but with one end left unwrought, evidently for hold- 

 ing in the hand ; scrapers with curvilinear edges ; rude flake- 



1 Prestwich, On the Geological Position and Age of the Flint-Implement-Bear- 

 ing Beds, etc. (from Phil. Trans.) ; London, 1864. 



* See Evans, ' Flint Implements in the Drift ;' London, 1862. 



