MARINE BIOLOGICAL STATION AT PORT ERIN. 71 



was inhabited by Xeolithic man, Lamplngh considers 

 proved by bis discovery of worked flints on their surfaces, 

 " some struck into flakes on the spot." Dr. Mnnro has 

 stated* that the upheaval which caused the similar 25 foot 

 raised beaches in Scotland was completed about the 

 beginning of the bronze age. 



It was shown during the second quarter of the nine- 

 teenth century, mainly as a result of the labours of the 

 Scandinavian archaeologists Thomsen, ^ilssen and 

 Worsaae, that a scientific division of prehistoric times in 

 Northern Europe could be made into the three ages of 

 " Stone," " Bronze " and " Iron." Further study of the 

 earliest prehistoric remains, especially in Prance and 

 England, has led to the recognition by archaeologists 

 generally of an older and ruder as distinct from a later 

 stone period, giving us in all the four divisions : — Palaeo- 

 lithic, Neolithic, Bronze and Iron. These successive 

 periods of advancing civilisation bridge the interval 

 between geological and historic times, and a few sentences 

 about the general characteristics of each age may be given 

 before we pass to our notes on the Manks antiquities. 



We may recall that • at the close of the Tertiary 

 Geological period, in Pleistocene times, Europe as far 

 South as 50° north latitude was covered with a great 

 ice-sheet largely consisting of glaciers which descended 

 the valleys, crept down upon the plains, and even ground 

 their way along the floor of the ocean. Scattered boulders, 

 beds of boulder clay and heaps and ridges of stone, gravel 

 and sand (moraines) are found deposited in various parts 

 of our country as remains of this " ice-age." Man was 

 certainly in Europe and possibly even in Britain, which 

 was then united to the Continent by continuous dry land, 

 * Proc. Eoy. Soc. Edinb., Vol. XXV., p. 272. 



