98 Proceedings of the Boi/al Irish Academy. 



occasionally entangled, in tlie iiiins of honses and "buildings buried in 

 the sea some distance from tlie coast of Blackpool." 



Tliese considerations vould apply still more strongly to the islands 

 which border the Trestem coast of Ireland, and "vrhich may be presnmed 

 to have been in former times larger and more important than they are 

 at present, as also more numerous. Such greater extent, number, and 

 importance of them in former times, would enter as factors into the 

 question of the advent of man in these countries and of the various 

 colonizations which it gave rise to. It is mainly to geology, and in 

 part to tradition and history, that we must have recourse for evidence 

 of these alterations in the coast line of the country, more particularly 

 as regards former extent. "With the aid of the Admiralty maps which 

 furnish reliable data as regards soundings, and which, by the aid of the 

 contour lines in depth, which these soundings enable us to draw, can 

 be indicated the probable extent and nature of the changes, which 

 have taken place in the coast lines of the country as the result of 

 immersion or emersion and general action of the sea. From this point 

 of view the subject has been very fully and lucidly treated by Prof essor 

 Eoyd Dawkins ia his work " Early Man in Britain and his place lathe 

 Tertiary Period," published in 1880, and fi'om which work the follow- 

 ing extracts are taken : — 



He opens (p. 3) with the remark: "The continuity between 

 Geology, Prehistoric Archaeology, and History is so direct that it is 

 impossible to picture early man in this country without usiag the 

 results of all these sciences," 



(p. 5.) — He states: "Before our ancestors were ia Europe, and 

 before our country was an island, there were Palaeolithic tribes in 

 Britain, ignorant of the use of polished stone and of metals, without 

 domestic animals, living solely by the chase, fishing, and fowling. Of 

 these, the older or ' river drift men ' have left evidence that they 

 wandered over the greater part of western and southern Europe, over 

 2sorth Africa, Asia Minor, and over the whole of India, while th& 

 newer or ' cave men ' have been traced over a large part of Em-ope." 



(p. 9^. — He gives his reasons for starting on his inquiry with the 

 commencement of the Tertiary Period as follows : "In the Tertiary 

 Period each life group is so closely linked to that which went before 

 and followed after, that there is no break of sufficient importance to 

 be used as a starting-poiat in our special inquiry into the Ancient 

 History of Man. "We shall therefore be compelled to tieat ia outHne 

 the principal changes which took place in this country from the 

 beginning of the Tertiary Period down to the time when man first 



