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worked out that we had two great eccentricities, one 800,000 years, and 
the other 200,000 years back, and if the hypothesis had been correct, wo 
had some data for fixing these glacial periods. I have on a former occa- 
sion attempted to prove that the eccentricity of the earth’s orbit would not 
occasion the glacial epoch, and that therefore these data have nothing 
whatever to do with the question. But, whilst I agree with the author 
of the paper that 200,000 years ago is not the period we are obliged to 
accept, yet I hesitate in accepting the conclusion of Dr. Southall that the 
period was as recent as he puts it, the vast changes that have taken place 
leading me to hesitate. For example, the paper refers to the palaeolithic 
flood which would have swept across Southern England and Northern France 
— that palaeolithic flood which it is assumed deposited the gravels. A 
flood carrying these gravels is more in accordance with what I have observed, 
than these gravels being river deposits. Yet I must remark that the time 
at which these gravels could have been swept across England and the North 
of France by the palaeolithic flood was a time when the Straits of Dover were 
not in existence, and the geological convulsion necessary for the sweeping of 
these gravels across England and France, connecting it also with the alteration 
that has taken place in the Straits of Dover, makes me hesitate in supposing 
that this could have taken place as recently as the author puts it, for it 
would bring it to about the time of Abraham. I have not been accustomed 
to think that such great changes have taken place at such a recent period as 
that. The author of the paper says : — “ If I can show that the glacial epoch 
came down to the date of Eobenhausen and the Danish shell-mounds, I shall 
have brought that mysterious geological episode within the well-defined 
limits of chronology ” (par. 9). If we take the date of Eobenhausen, the 
author of the paper has put it at four thousand years back, — I do not • 
think he ought to put it further back — Robenhausen is one of the oldest of 
the Lake Dwellings, and antiquarians have been accustomed to speak of it 
as of great antiquity. I visited it during last autumn, and, in conjunction 
with the famous antiquary, M. Messikommer, who resides in that neigh- 
bourhood, did some dredging. Judging from the things we brought from 
the bottom, I should not think Eobenhausen a place of vast antiquity. We 
brought up pieces of pottery, also portions of woven cloth. The people who 
had inhabited Eobenhausen knew something, therefore, about the loom. 
When I reached home I met with some remark about metal having been 
found there, and crucibles. I wrote to M. Messikommer to know whether 
he had met with anything of the kind, and his reply was in the affirmative, 
but he said the metal he had found was not larger than the head of a pin, 
it was copper, and was in a crucible. This was enough. If the metal 
were as large as the head of a pin and he had found it in what was really a 
crucible, I was satisfied. There were also five other crucibles. When we 
find six crucibles among the things belonging to these lake dwellings, 
we must conclude that they knew something about metals, and if they did, 
this fact takes them out of the stone age. Now the conclusion of the author 
that the glacial epoch lasted up to the polished stone age, is based upon the 
