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The Chairman. — I am sure I may convey the thanks of the Institute to 
the author and also to the reader of this most interesting paper.* 
Mr. David Howard, F.C.S. — I cannot but think that a very strong 
protest is needed, such as this paper in a measure affords, against the 
modern habit of throwing in a few hundreds of thousands of years, whether 
they are wanted or not. It seems to me that the modern tendency, especially 
in regard to geological matters, is to refer to periods of hundreds of thousands 
of years in the same indefinite sense whereby in old indictments a man 
was stated to have called sundry — that is, ten thousand — people to assist 
him in his evil deeds. Undoubtedly in the study of geology we necessarily 
have to deal with enormous periods — periods so vast that they entirely over- 
whelm our knowledge of time ; but it does seem somewhat childlike, 
because the sense of time is almost lost in the vastness of it, at once to 
rush into wild numbers which have no meaning. One knows very well that 
the old Greeks and the modern child, when they get a little way in counting, 
at once resort to the “ myriad ” of Homer. When it gets beyond the hun- 
dreds, the child has got quite beyond all notion of figures and addition, and 
I am a little afraid that there is something of the same tendency in modern 
thought on scientific matters. We get to a period which goes beyond 
history, and at once jump into myriads. We do not trouble our heads 
as to the exact counting of Homer. We do not suppose that he seriously 
meant what we do by the precise words he uses as we repeat them. I 
* Mr. S. R. Pattison, F.G.S., writes as follows in regard to the paper : — 
I wish to offer a few observations, not to the general scope or conclusions of 
Dr. Southall’s important paper, but to one portion of his argument. He 
states that the glacial epoch in Scandinavia, is contemporaneous with the 
first Hint-tool period. This may have been so. Then, that the second, viz., 
the polished stone period, occurred as soon as the ice had been removed still 
further north. This also is most probable. He rightly thus brings down 
the close of the glacial epoch into the domains of history. But he further 
says that although there is a very distinct line of demarcation between the 
two periods, yet the one very quickly followed the other. Now, this, I 
think, is a weak proposition in a good argument. Whoever studies the 
gravels and brick-earth of the palaeolithic age in the ground below where we 
now stand, in the valley of the Thames, will see that great intervals of quiet 
deposit intercalate with other periods of disturbance of local and great action. 
There are successive platforms of life, indicated alike by shells and bones. I 
believe that in one of these quiescent stages man first appeared here. He 
was both heralded and succeeded by floods and “ moving accidents.” The 
statement of this, and assigning adequate time, does not require, on the 
whole, more time than the Mosaic account by inference gives, and thus I beg 
to offer my thanks for the main argument of Dr. Southall. It is constructed 
on the lines which the thought on the subject is taking, viz., the bringing 
down the epoch of the great mammals and of the advent of man, rather than 
the piling up ages for the latter, and I am glad the Society has had so clear 
and full a statement of the case. I have offered my remarks to save the 
wholesale condemnation which might be uttered, on the ground of the 
untenable (as I think) hypothesis of a distinction between the first period 
and the epoch of disturbance, which I hold, on the evidence, to have been a 
portion of it . 
