200 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 



present moment there is the widest and vaguest notions 

 as to the relative ages of these implement-yielding deposits, 

 and until more light shall have been thrown on the age and 

 sequence of all post-tertiary accumulations, the antiquity of 

 man must continue to remain an unsettled and perplexing 

 problem. Indeed the problem is at the present moment in a 

 more unsettled state than it was eighteen months ago ; and 

 all that has been really gained by the discussion is, that it 

 has been made an open question— a subject which any geo- 

 logist may discuss from a purely natural history point of 

 view, without having his motives suspected or his ortho- 

 doxy called in question. I say " natural history point of 

 view," for there is no reason why he may not discuss the 

 antiquity of man with as much freedom and philosophy 

 as we discuss the antiquity of the mammoth or mastodon. 

 It is true, and it is much to be regretted, that some inquirers 

 have unguardedly mingled up the question of man's origin 

 with that of his antiquity. The two questions, however, 

 stand on widely different platforms. The one involves con- 

 siderations purely stratigraphical ; the other considerations 

 at once physiological and geological — involves, in fact, the 

 whole theory of life and life-development. Let us not, then, 

 be led away from a problem that is hopefully soluble into 

 one which, if not beyond our solution, is placed at all events 

 so much beyond our present reach that generations may 

 pass away before we arrive even at the methods by which 

 the solution is to be attained. Adhering to the whole ques- 

 tion of the antiquity of man, whose own remains and the 

 remains of his rude implements have been found along with 

 those of the mammoth and tichorine rhinoceros in the qua- 

 ternary deposits of Europe, let us first determine the chrono- 

 logical sequence of these deposits ; and then, before giving 

 expression to our beliefs in years and centuries, let us carry 

 our researches into Asia and Africa, where there is every 

 reason to believe that mankind existed for ages before his 

 ruder offshoots found their way to the shores of Western 

 Europe. My own opinion is, that this question of man's 

 antiquity has also suffered by the injudicious haste of some 

 observers to give numerical expression to their beliefs. That 



