74 WILSON 



cal features of the country since Stone Henge or Avebury 

 Circle were built, or the aline i stones of Carnac placed in posi- 

 tion, but Palae3!ithic man saw great geological changes which 

 must represent a vast extent of time. 



Valleys were eroded to great depths during the period in 

 which he lived, while rivers which are now but a few hundred 

 feet across, he then saw as swollen floods two miles or more in 

 width. Th^ slow movements of the earth's crust by which 

 whole continents are raised and lowered, enabled him with the 

 animals he hunted, to pass dry shod between the continent of 

 Europe and the British Isles, and this great but slow change 

 in the physical outline of Europe took place more than once 

 since that time when Palaeolithic man first made his undoubted 

 appearance. 



He lived through the vast period of time represented by the 

 slow coming on of glacial conditions, the formation of a great 

 continental ice sheet over all northern Europe, and the return 

 once more to a milder climate with all the changes of fauna and 

 flora these imply. 



We cannot tell the length of time in years, it may be fifty 

 thousand, it may be more, but by the immense physical changes 

 which have taken place, we know it must be very great, and not 

 to be reckoned as history reckons her time. 



Such is a brief outline of Palaeolithic man, of our ancestor in 

 Quarternary times, and here we will leave him and close this 

 paper. 



