PROCEEDINGS COTTESWOLD CLUB 
1917 
I go 
CHELTENHAM AND CLEEVE HILL. 
July ioth, 1917. 
For this meeting, Mr J. W. Gray had been at much pains to prepare 
an attractive programme, and he was rewarded with complete success and 
an excellent attendance, those present being : — 
The President, C. Bailey, F. H. Bretherton, O. A. Brown, Rev. J. J. 
D. Cooke, C. A. Crane, F. J. Cullis, Colonel Duke, F. W. Duart-Smith, T. S. 
Ellis, J. C. Frith, E. W. Fyffe, J. H. Gari'ett, J. W. Gray, Ernest Hartland, 
J. N. Hobbs, A. E. Hurry, Colonel Jeune, Rev. P. M. C. Johnstone, J. H. Jones, 
H. H. Knight, E. Lawrence, A. S. Montgomrey, Rev. H. Moxon, J. F. Muir, 
F. J. Mylius, Surgeon-Major Newton, A. J. Stephens, C. Upton, J. A. Smithin, 
and Roland Austin, the visitors including Dr. Lloyd, A. J. de Havilland 
Bushnell, Dr. Davies, etc. 
By permission of the Chairman and Committee of the Cheltenham 
Museum, the Members assembled in one of the rooms in the Museum, where 
A. J. de Havilland Bushnell, M.A. gave a lecture on “Man before Metals,” 
which was illustrated by flints collected on the Cotteswolds. 
Mr Bushnell observed that the subject of Early Man was of special 
interest to such a Society for two reasons. In the first place it was a new 
science, being not yet sixty years old ; therefore an enormous amount re- 
mained to be done for it, and why not a portion of this by some of those 
present, particularly as one division of the science could be better studied in 
Gloucestershire than elsewhere ? The second reason was that the science 
of Early Man owed its inception entirel}’’ to amateurs. The first of these 
amateurs, Boucher de Perthes, director of the Custom House at Abbeville, 
found flint hatchets among the mammoth bones there, and hence 
concluded that man was co-aeval with these animals. Hugh Falconer, a 
retired Indian doctor, was, however, the real founder of the science ; it 
was he who began in 1858 to stir up the hidebound geologists. He urged 
Joseph Prestwich, a wine merchant, to visit Abbeville and see for himself, 
and, together with John Evans, a paper maker, Prestwich went. Going as 
sceptics, they were at once convinced, and the commanding genius of these 
two men satisfied the savants not only of England but of France also ; and 
in i860 the learned world admitted that man had existed for over 100,000 
years. Lartet, a lawyer of Toulouse, visited Abbeville, and afterwards 
began hunting in the cave of Aurignac, between Toulouse and the Pyrenees. 
His friend, Henry Christy, joined him in the work, and, with princely liber- 
ality, paid all expenses. Following these, a young banker, John Lubbock, 
who afterwards became Lord Avebury, made the subject popular by his 
work on prehistoric man and animals, and by drawing the distinction betwen 
palaeolithic and neolithic time. The French Government gave the Chateau 
of St. Germain, where James II. died, as a museum for buried “ finds,” and 
