﻿Address. 411 



not to my mind proved satisfactory, nor has it, I believe, 

 been generally accepted. Moreover, the archa'ological 

 difficulty that man, at two such remote epochs as the pre- 

 Grlacial and the post-Glacial, even if the term Glacial 

 be limited to tlie Chalky Boulder Clay, should have 

 manufactured implements so identical in character that 

 they cannot be distinguished apart, seems to have been 

 entirely ignored. 



Within the last few months we have had the report of 

 worked flints having been discovered in the late Pliocence 

 Forest Bed of Norfolk, but in that instance the signs 

 of human workmanship upon the flints are by no means 

 apparent to all observers. 



But such an antiquity as that of the Forest Bed is 

 as nothing when compared with that which would Ije 

 implied by the discoveries of the work of men's hands in 

 the Pliocene and Miocence beds of England, France, 

 Italy and Portugal, which have been accepted by some 

 Geologists. There is one feature in these cases which has 

 hardly received due attention, and that is the isolated 

 character of the reputed discoveries. Had man, for 

 instance, been present in Britain during the Crag Period, 

 it would be strange indeed if the sole traces of his 

 existence that he left were a perforated tooth of a large 

 shark, the sawn rib of a manatee, and a beaming full face, 

 carved on the shell of a pectunculus ! 



In an address to the Anthropological Section at the 

 Leeds meeting of this Association in ] 890 I dealt some- 

 what fully with these supposed discoveries of the remains 

 of human art in beds of Tertiary date ; and I need 

 not here go further into the question. Suffice it to 

 say that I see no reason why the verdict of " not proven" 

 at which I then arrived should be reversed. 



In the case of a more recent discovery in Upper Burma 

 in beds at first pronounced to be Upper Miocene, but 

 subsequently " definitely ascertained to be Pliocene," some 



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