236 
tooth is found in disturbed surface-soil with Roman ware the two were of 
the same date, is as fallacious as it would be to say that, because we have 
found, as we have found, in another part of the cave, Roman, Mediaeval, and 
modern pottery, and even fragments of tobacco-pipes, mingled in the surface- 
soil, the Roman and the Mediaeval potter, and the user of the clay-pipes, 
must all have lived together in the same age. There is another point which 
must not be passed over. Mr. Callard says, as I gather from p. 218, that the 
men of Cresswell wrought in iron ; on the next page he says they hammered 
out iron implements, and with metal shears cut their horses’ manes. The 
proof he giVes is, that they left behind them some ironstone implements. 
But surely there is an enormous difference between chipping a rude tool out 
of a bit of the Derbyshire clay ironstone (this is one of the implements in 
question) and forging a tool out of metallic iron ! The use of metals, as far 
as we have evidence, was utterly unknown to the Palaeolithic hunters. As 
to the hog-maned horses, if their manes were artificially produced, — which 
I am not prepared, however, to grant, — why might they not have been 
singed? We know that these men were acquainted with the use of fire. 
But it is not at all unlikely that the cave horse, with its large asinine head 
and small limbs, like the ass or the zebra of to-day, had a short erect mane, as 
represented in all the old Palaeolithic drawings ; we have no reason to suppose 
that the men of that period had succeeded in domesticating the horse, 
although they would frequently kill it for food. 
The evidence of Cresswell then, as I read it, tells us nothing as to the 
antiquity of the earliest men in England, only that they lived in conjunction 
with animals long since extinct, or to be found only in distant countries, — 
animals concerning which history is absolutely silent ; and we can scarcely 
think that had the Romans met with or heard of the mammoth, the 
rhinoceros, or the formidable machairodus, or hyaena in North-Western 
Europe, such a remarkable fact would have escaped the notice of such 
observant writers as Caesar or Tacitus ; and, besides this, all the negative 
evidence we have tends to show that the Pleistocene mammalia, with but 
few exceptions, were unknown to the Neolithic men, who were separated 
from their predecessors by an unbridged gap. 
There are other points in the paper we have heard read which will, 
perhaps, be noticed by others ; but I fear that I have already taken up far 
too much of your time : my excuse must be the great importance of obtaining 
exact evidence. I think the question of the antiquity of man, as far as geology 
has anything to say about it, rests now pretty much where it did years ago. 
We have no proof that will stand the test of close examination that man 
was pre-glacial ; nor, on the other hand, have we any as to the date of his 
first appearance in North-Western Europe. It was certainly pre-historic as 
far as these countries are concerned, and the changes that have taken place 
in climate and in physical geography, as well as some other considerations, 
seem to show that a lengthened period must have elapsed since Palaeolithic 
man disappeared ; any computation as to the exact time cannot be anything 
but mere guesswork, as far as I can read the evidence of British caverns. I 
