314 The Antiquity of Mankind. [May, 
beaver, wolf, fox, stag, roe, the wild bull ( Unis ), the wild 
boar, and the horse have made their appearance. Still the 
proof in favour of man’s presence, in Europe at least, in 
the early Pleistocene is not free from doubt, and the author 
agrees with Sir John Lubbock in referring the evidence to a 
“ suspense account.” In the middle Pleistocene man ex- 
isted in Britain, as is proved by a wrought flint-flake found 
by the Rev. Osmond Fisher, in the author’s presence, in the 
lower brick-earths at Crayford, Mr. Dawkins guarantees 
that it was in situ. Four years later a second specimen, 
also in situ, was found in the same series of beds at Erith. 
The discovery of these two implements shows that man 
lived “ in the valley of the lower Thames before the Artfdc 
Mammalia had taken full possession of the Thames Valley^, 
and before the big-nosed rhinoceros had become extinct.” 
Among his animal neighbours were grisly bears, enormous 
lions, hyenas, and wolves. Against these formidable com- 
petitors the “ river-drift men ” had to struggle, armed with 
but poor appliances. Flakes of flint, quartzite, or chert, 
roughly chipped to a cutting edge, served them for tools and 
weapons,— a slight advance beyond the condition of the ape 
who employs unsharpened stones to break nuts or to pound 
the head of a venomous serpent. 
It may be well here to mention that Mr. Dawkins is by 
no means hasty in accepting evidences of the existence of 
pre-historic men. Professors Riitimeyer and Schwendauer, 
for instance, had detected in the lignite beds of Diirnten 
and Ultznach, of the Mid Pleistocene Age, a something 
which seemed to be the fragmentary remains of fossilised 
basket-work. Our author, however, after examining these 
relics, views them as knots from a decayed fir tree, without 
any marks of human handiwork. 
As we descend to the later Pleistocene Age the signs of 
man’s presence and activity become more numerous. The 
valley of the Thames and the fluviatile gravels of Salisbury, 
and a variety of spots in the south-eastern parts of England, 
have yielded rude stone-implements of the type generally 
known as palaeolithic. Nothing similar has, however, yet 
been found to the north-west of a line drawn from Bristol 
to the Wash. On what is now the Continent these same 
palaeolithic men appear to have been widely, though not 
thickly, spread. In France, Spain, Italy, the north of 
Africa, Syria, and India, traces of their former occurrence 
are found in the shape of stone-implements of the same 
type. Skeletons of these river-drift men have also been 
discovered, though in so very fragmentary and imperfedl a 
