﻿Address. 417 



We must, liowever, take a wider view of the whole 

 question, for it must not for a moment be supposed that 

 there are the slightest grounds for believing that the 

 civilisation, such as it was, of the Paheolithic Period 

 originated in the British Isles. We find in other countries 

 implements so identical in form and character with 

 British specimens that they might have been manufactured 

 by the same hands. These occur over large areas in 

 France under similar conditions to those that prevail 

 in England. Tlie same forms have been discovered in 

 the ancient river gravels of Italy, Spain and Portugal. 

 Some few have been recorded from the north of Africa, 

 and analogous types occur in considerable numbers in the 

 south of that continent. On tlie banks of the Nile, many 

 hundreds of feet above its present level, implements 

 of the European times have been discovered ; while in 

 Somaliland, in an ancient river valley at a great elevation 

 above the sea, Mr. Seton-Karr has collected a large 

 number of implements formed of flint and quartzite, 

 which, judging from their form and character, might have 

 been dug out of the drift deposits of the Somme or 

 the Seine, the Thames or the ancient Solent. 



In the valley of the Euphrates implements of the same 

 kind have also been found, and again farther east in the 

 lateritic deposits of Southern India they have been 

 obtained in considerable numbers. It is not a little 

 remarkable, and is at the same time highly suggestive, 

 that a form of implement almost peculiar to Madras 

 reappears among implements from the very ancient 

 gravels of the Manzanares at Madrid. In the case of the 

 African discoveries we have as yet no definite Palseon- 

 tological evidence by which to fix their antiquity, but in 

 the Narbad^ Valley of Western India Paleolithic imple- 

 ments of quartzite seem to be associated with a local 

 fauna of Pleistocene age, comprising, like that of Europe, 

 the elephant, hippopotamus, ox, and other mammals of 



