would afford abundant prey to the lions, bears, and hysenas 

 inhabiting all the accessible caves, as well as to their great enemy 

 and destroyer — Man." 



For we liave certainly arrived at last at the advent of our own 

 species. Along with the mammals from the south wandered the 

 highest of them all, very low in the scale of humanity as yet, it is 

 true ; only a nomad hunter, but still a Man, already asserting his 

 dominion over the fowls of the air and the beasts of the field, and 

 having latent within him, savage as he was, all the infinite 

 possibilities of our nature. He came then originally into Britain 

 by Land, long before it was an island, certainly towards the close of 

 the Glacial Period, possibly before. No fossil remains of these 

 early men have yet been discovered in Britain, although they have 

 on the continent. But undoubted tokens of their presence have 

 been found in no stinted numbers in the form of roughly chipped 

 flint tools and weapons in the gravels deposited by the rivers. 

 These early unpolished specimens such as that shown on the slide 

 are termed Palceolithic, and have been found in the gravels 

 in the valley of the Thames high above its present level, i.e. to say, 

 they were deposited there long before the river had cut down to the 

 present depth ; also at Fisherton near Salisbury, Axmiuster, and 

 numerous other localities. Man lived here then in company with 

 the mammoth, the woolly rhinoceros, the lion, hyaena, and 

 hippopotamus. Let me quote to you another of the inimitable 

 word-pictures scattered throughout Professor B. Dawkins' " Early 

 Man in Britain " : — 



" The primeval hunter, who followed the chase in the lower 

 valley of the Thames, armed with his rude implements of flint, 

 must have found abundance of food, and have had great difficulty 

 in guarding himself against the wild animals. Innumerable 

 horses, large herds of stags, uri, and bison, were to be seen in tbe 

 open country, while the Irish Elk and tbe roe were comparatively 

 rare. Three kinds of rhinoceros and two kinds of elephant lived 

 in the forests. The hippopotamus haunted the banks of the 

 Thames, as well as tbe bearer, the water-rat, and the otter. There 

 were wolves also, and foxes, brown bears and grisly bears, wild 

 cats, and lions of enormous size. Wild boars lived in the thickets ; 

 and as the night came on the hyaenas assembled in packs to hunt 

 down the young, the wounded, and the infirm." 



The union of Ireland to England, and of England to the 

 continent was probably continuous during the latter part of the 

 Pleistocene Period, lasting long enough for two invasions of 

 Palaeolithic men, and some think even for the Neolithic. But no 

 doubt subsidence was gradually going on, and it was certainly 

 completed to severance before all the animals and plants now found 



