20 The Thirty-Fourth General Meeting, 



held in the hand at one end and trimmed to a point at the other 

 appears to have afforded the most advanced idea of a general tool 

 for all the purposes of life, so that the paleolithic or earliest form 

 of implements can be everywhere distinguished by their simplicity 

 from tjie neolithic or stone implements of a later date, and they are 

 more or less the same in all the localities in which they have been 

 found. As regards the time necessary for the erosion of the valleys 

 and the deposition of the beds belonging to this period it is generally 

 admitted that it cannot be computed in years. At first geologists 

 were inclined to demand an enormous time for it, but recently, in 

 consequence of the observations on the erosion of glaciers, less time 

 has been thought necessary, and Mr. Prestwich, in a paper read 

 lately before the Geological Society, has given his reasons for 

 believing that the time estimated since the termination of the last 

 glacial epoch may be greatly curtailed. But although the sequence 

 of palseolithic, neolithic, and bronze implements had been firmly 

 established in the north and west of Europe, it had not been proved 

 that the same sequence took place in Egypt, Assyria, and those 

 countries in which civilisation dates back to a very much earlier 

 time, for it seemed certain that the Stone Age of the north and west 

 of Europe was contemparaneous with a very much more advanced 

 civilisation in the south and east. The attention of arch geologists | 

 had, therefore, been turned for some time to the question of a Stone 

 Age in Egypt. The valley of the Nile, it was found, was covered 

 with flint implements which corresponded in form to those of the 

 palseolithic type of Europe. But this coincidence of form alone, 

 though highly suggestive for the reasons I have given, was not in 

 itself sufficient to determine sequence, because they had been found 

 only on the surface, and in order to prove them anterior to Egyptian 

 civilisation it would be necessary to adduce the same kind of evidence 

 of their antiquity that had been shown in Europe, by finding 

 them in the gravels in the sides of the valley and in places 

 which could be proved to have been undisturbed since Egyptian 

 civilisation commenced, and this was the more necessary beeause 

 it was known that flints were used for embalming purposes in 

 Egyptian times. Here I may be permitted again to refer to 



