ANCESTRAL MAN. 



4. — And, lastly, wherever such implements are met with, no 

 matter what their estimated age, it is certain that they were 

 produced by beings, human, or perhaps pre-human, who learned 

 to do so by long and patient practice. 



III.— THE GLACIAL THEORY. 



There is no more any doubt as to the former occurrence of 

 periods of European glaciation, though the scientific world 

 is still somewhat divided as to their cause and extent. We may 

 take Prof. Dawkins and Prof. Haughton as representing the more 

 moderate view, and Prof. Ramsay and Mr. Croll as the advocates 

 of extreme opinions. 



Prof. Dawkins, in his " Cave Hunting," does, indeed, freely 

 admit that " there have been two periods of glaciation in Britain. 

 " The first was a time when a continuous ice-sheet covered the 

 " whole country." Traces of this period, in the shape of a true 

 " till," a tough clay produced by glacial action, are to be met with 

 at the Little Orme's Head, and in South Lancashire. " This was 

 " succeeded by a period of depression beneath the sea " — others 

 would say, by a rising of the sea over the land, in consequence of 

 the melting of immense masses of ice — " to a height of 1,300 feet, 

 " when, from the pre-existing glacial detritus, were washed the 

 " shingle and sand which constitute the middle drift." 



The second glaciation, according to Prof. Dawkins, took place 

 after " a re-elevation of the land " — others would say, after the sea 

 had been again withdrawn — " when glaciers were formed which 

 " occupied isolated areas, but did not compose a continuous 

 " sheet." Traces of this period are to be found in the boulder- 

 clay that exists so abundantly in East Lancashire. Prof. Dawkins 

 further says, in the work already cited, that " Pleistocene mammals, 

 " including man, occupied Europe before the first of these two 

 glacial periods, and inhabited Britain during the second." 



He now speaks, however, in a lately published article, of a 

 threefold arrangement of the glacial strata of Pleistocene times ; 

 while recent discoveries have led him to conclude that early 

 British man was probably pre-glacial. 



Now, there are two essential requisites of an ice age ; first, great 

 heat to raise vapour, and second, great cold, as on high mountains, 

 to condense it. Altitude of land, then, must always be a likely 



