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present time new questions have arisen, as yet obscure and 
uncertain, but which we cannot avoid taking into some con- 
sideration when we treat of the antiquities of any part of 
our island. During the last few years, the antiquary has 
entered into alliance with the geologist, and out of this 
alliance new ideas have arisen, which are all embodied in the 
great question of the antiquity of man, whether he has 
existed on this earth only during the comparatively short 
period to which history seems to point, or whether he has 
inhabited it through a period stretching over a vast number 
of ages before time is known to history at all. It is a question 
of great importance, which is at present very far from 
decided. The supposed evidence of this great antiquity is 
found, 1st, in flint implements, rudely formed, but certainly 
by the hands of man, which have been discovered in the drift 
gravels in the valleys of the Somme and the Seine, in France, 
and in some of the river valleys in England, associated 
with bones of animals which must have been extinct in these 
countries at a very remote period; 2nd, caves, in which objects 
made by man, and remains of man himself, are found inter- 
mixed with the remains of animals which also must have 
become extinct at a very remote period, while the caves them- 
selves are supposed to have been removed by some natural 
convulsion out of their original position since these deposits 
have been made ; 3rd, remains of objects made by man, found 
at great depths in the ground ; 4th, ancient shell-mounds, or 
heaps of refuse from the eating of shell-fish, found chiefly 
on the coasts of Denmark and Scotland ; and 5th, the ancient 
lacustrine villages, or groups of huts raised upon piles, which 
have been discovered in the lakes of Switzerland, and which 
have been ascribed to a period hardly less remote than that of 
the bone-caves. 
The stone implements found in the drift have all the appear- 
ance of being as old as the drift itself. As they possess no 
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