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The fact that man co existed in Britain, and as far south as the 
south of Fiance, with the reindeer and musk ox, which animals 
are now confined to arctic regions, seems to carry us back to times 
in which the cold of the ‘ Great Ice Age,’ still continued. We 
are perhaps hardly justified by the present evidence in asserting 
that the existence of palaeolithic man in glacial times is proved 
beyond question, but the considerations I have laid before you 
seem to me at least to point strongly in that direction. 
It must not be forgotten, that although we have traced primeval 
man in Britain to an exceedingly distant epoch, for such a 
position has been unquestionably established, quite apart from 
the views of those who believe in interglacial man, we have 
by no means followed back the stream of archaeological 
history to its source. There is no reason whatever to suppose that 
the first progenitors of mankind lived in Britain. The savages 
who originally visited these regions came as immigrants, driven no 
doubt from temperate climes to the then inhospitable regions of 
the north, by the pressure of stronger races. Ethnology would lead 
us to suppose that primeval man lived in a continent extending 
from northern Africa to India, and across the Bay of Bengal to 
New Guinea, the greater part of the central portion of which is 
now submerged, and this may have taken place as far back as the 
miocene period. It will not therefore surprise us, if when the 
same careful investigation comes to be applied to the continents of 
Europe, Asia, and Africa, which has been given to the small area of 
England, the birthplace of stratigraphical geology, evidence should 
be forthcoming which will enable us to carry man’s antiquity much 
further back than we can do at present. He would not be a very 
rash prophet, I think, who foretold the discovery of such evidence. 
Our belief in the antiquity of man, by no means, however, rests 
on the unsupported evidence of archaeology. The sciences of 
ethnology, of philology, and as some think of history also, bear 
similar testimony, with one voice telling us that the advent of the 
human race took place at a period which is too far removed from 
our own to be estimated by our historical methods. 
It is worthy of remark, that as far as those portions of the 
