﻿410 Canadian Record of Scie7ice. 



in order to explain the events of what is called the modern 

 period, shrink naturally at first from making what seems 

 so lavish an expenditure of past time. Throughout our 

 early education we have been accustomed to such strict 

 economy in all that relates to the chronology of the earth 

 and its inhabitants in remote ages, so fettered have 

 we been by old traditional beliefs, that even when our 

 reason is convinced, and we are persuaded that we ought 

 to make more liberal grants of time to the geologist, 

 we feel how hard it is to get the chill of poverty out 

 of our bones." 



Many, however, have at the present day got over 

 this feeling, and of late years the general tendency 

 of those engaged upon the question of the antiquity of the 

 human race has been in the direction of seeking for 

 evidence by which the existence of man upon the earth 

 could be carried back to a date earlier than that of 

 the Quaternary gravels. 



There is little doubt that such evidence will eventually 

 be forthcoming, but, judging from all probability, it is not 

 in Northern Europe that the cradle of the human race 

 will eventually be discovered, but in some part of the 

 world more favoured by a tropical climate, where 

 abundant means of subsistence could be procured, and 

 where the necessity for warm clothing did not exist. 



Before entering into speculations on this subject, or 

 attempting to lay down the limits within which we may 

 safely accept recent discoveries as firmly established, 

 it will be well to glance at some of the cases in which 

 implements are stated to have been found under circum- 

 stances which raise a presumption of the existence of man 

 in pre-Glacial, Pliocene, or even Miocene times. 



Flint implements of ordinary Paliseolithic type have, for 

 instance, been recorded as found in the Eastern Counties 

 of England, in beds beneath the Chalky Boulder Clay ; 

 but on careful examination the geological evidence has 



