i2 4 PREHISTORIC EUROPE. 



to ignore the common agents of change, and to rely chiefly upon 

 the supposed occurrence of a tumultuous rush of waters in his 

 endeavours to decipher .the meaning of certain geological phe- 

 nomena, it is perhaps not surprising that problem and solution 

 alike failed to attract attention. Be that, however, as it may, 

 it is unquestionably true that the chief reason for our neglect of 

 the evidence of man's antiquity lay in the simple fact that we 

 were prejudiced against it. It was against their wills that 

 most geologists were at last convinced, and numerous were the 

 objections raised before the majority could divest themselves of 

 their old persuasion, and accept the new views. But so cogent 

 and abundant has the evidence now become, that the sole non- 

 contents who venture to appear in print are writers who have 

 merely a certain literary acquaintance with the subject, and 

 whose objections often are, in a certain sense at least, un- 

 answerable. 



It was Mr. Prestwich who some twenty years ago first 

 drew the attention of English geologists to the discoveries made 

 by Boucher de Perthes, and so admirably did he expound the 

 phenomena that his conclusions at once made a profound im- 

 pression. He completed a careful examination of many localities 

 in the north of France and the south-east of England, and 

 proved to demonstration that the flint implements were un- 

 doubtedly the work of man's hand, and had been buried in 

 sediment contemporaneously with the remains of the Old 

 Pleistocene mammalia. He showed, moreover, that the sand 

 and gravel in which these relics lay entombed were not the 

 result of any sudden dthdcle or deluge, but had been formed 

 and deposited by streams and rivers in the process of excavat- 

 ing their valleys. He pointed out, moreover, that some of the 

 sediments spoke to the former occurrence of intermittent or 

 periodical floods of vast extent. In short, he interpreted the 

 phenomena on uniformitarian principles, and so clearly and 

 cautiously did he reason out his conclusions, that his views 

 have deservedly met with very general acceptance. They were 

 adopted by Sir Charles Lyell in his well-known work The 



