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natural flints ; but there are many, I am sure, which are artificial, and on 
this subject Mr. Whitley and I are at issue. There were thirty-six specimens 
of Brixham flints, fifteen of which were artificially worked ; and if there was 
only one specimen of artificial workmanship, it would be as good as a 
thousand. I hold letters from Mr. Prestwich, and from Mr. Boyd Dawkins, 
saying, in effect, that all computations of the dates of geological phenomena 
are inaccurate and useless for chronological purposes. Mr. Dawkins then 
refers me to his book and seeks to explain, or rather recapitulates the state- 
ment made in that book, that there are glacial phenomena at Settle more 
recent than the remains of man. This may be so, without its proving that 
these remains are pre-glacial, for this would carry them back to a far greater 
antiquity than any one supposes, or than there is any evidence of. 
The Rev. Prebendary Row. — Has Mr. Pattison’s attention been directed 
to the excavations made in Troy 1 
Mr. Pattison. — No : I have looked to see whether they would furnish 
any evidence, but they are too modern for us here this evening. 
Mr. Row. — I understand a flint age was discovered there, or a set of flints 
supposed to belong to the first flint age, and below that a much higher 
form of civilization ; if this were clearly established, it seems to me that it 
would have a most important bearing on this question. 
Mr. Pattison. — I have not followed it at all, but I should think it very 
likely, but not very important, because the evidences of a primitive civiliza- 
tion and barbarism overlay each other in turn, and these changes have been 
very rapid indeed in Asia Minor — a country which used frequently to be 
overrun by barbarism. 
Mr. A. Tylor. — I have listened to Mr. Pattison’s paper with much 
attention, and think it is by far the best rfaume on the antiquity of 
man which has appeared. Hitherto those who have written well upon this 
subject have been original observers as well as writers, and have taken 
their own point of view. In the paper we have just heard every one must 
admit that the evidence is most fairly stated, although we may differ as to 
the conclusions. I can say, for myself, that in what I have written I have 
tried to make out the relative age of man and of the gravel-beds themselves, 
from the geological evidence alone, and not from the opinions of others. 
Perhaps I may be allowed to refer to the change of view that has taken place, 
even in my time, in regard to the age and manner of deposition of these 
gravel-beds. When I first joined the Geological Society, thirty years ago, 
what is called the glacial hypothesis was not much known. Playfair, in 1805, 
observed the land ice-action in Switzerland, but did not apply it to lower 
ground. Agassiz and the older (Dr.) Buckland, in 1837, took the whole world 
by surprise when they spoke of glaciers having once existed in these temperate 
climates. The older geologists, such as Hutton and Playfair, had not given 
sufficient attention to the probable accumulation of snow and ice in former 
periods, or to the evidence everywhere of such great and recent changes of 
