34 
200,000 years as the date of the Ice age, and also as the date of the men 
who left the “ human deposit ” referred to in the gravel drift. I think a great 
step has been taken to-night if Professor Birks has established this one 
point. I reached the same conclusion as the author of the paper has done, 
when the hypothesis of Mr. James Croll was first published, and feel honoured 
by Professor Birks’ reference to my pamphlet, and I scarcely need say that 
the conclusion I then reached has been greatly strengthened by to-night’s 
paper. There may be, as stated by Dr. Currey, other reasons for believing 
in the great antiquity of man, most of which reasons will be no doubt 
brought under consideration when Professor McKenny Hughes (Wood- 
wardian Professor of Geology) reads his paper upon the subject ; but there 
are no other reasons that can be produced, except those to which Professor 
Birks has replied, that will fix 200,000 years as the period of man’s intro- 
duction to the earth. I would like now to offer a remark or two upon 
the “ human deposits ” of the drift ; they are described by Professor Birks as 
flints, which “ are affirmed to have been plainly fashioned into tools, spears, 
or hatchets by the hands of savage men.” If the affirmation is correct, the 
antiquity of the savage men who fashioned them is not proven, unless the 
age of the drift in which they are found is also proven : but if, on the 
other hand, there should be reasonable doubt about the human fashioning 
of these flints into tools, spears, or hatchets, the evidence for man’s anti- 
quity will be considerably reduced. I will confine my remarks to ttfc 
affirmed implements, &c., of the gravel drift ; those from Brixham Cave were, 
in my judgment, satisfactorily disposed of in a paper read by Mr. Whitley 
before this Institute. But the implements of the gravel drift demand more 
careful consideration. I have seen that beautiful collection in Blackmore 
Museum, Salisbury ; and some of the still finer specimens in the possession 
of Mr. John Evans, the President of the Anthropological Society. I have 
looked at them until I have been hardly able to doubt the human origin 
claimed for them. But then I have to bear in mind that these are very 
choice specimens, virtually selected from some thousands of other broken 
flints that bear more or less resemblance to these chosen ones. I have seen 
about a thousand together at the residence of the late M. Boucher de Perthes, 
at Abbeville ; they were collected from the implement-bearing gravel in 
that neighbourhood, but I do not think that there is any one present 
who would not at once dismiss two-thirds of them as simply flints that had 
met with accidental fracture, yet all bearing a certain resemblance to the 
better forms. Here is a very fine specimen of the spearhead type [Mr. 
Callard produced a specimen, which was handed round the room for inspec- 
tion] ; it was found in the gravel-bed of Moulin Quignon, and no believer 
in drift implements would question the human fashioning of this specimen. 
But here is a broken flint which I took out of the same gravel-pit [the 
specimen was shown] which I do not think that any member of this Insti- 
tute would claim for a human implement ; but when the other side of the 
flint is presented to you, it exhibits the same ouilinc as the accepted spear- 
