i6 
upon them, to be not the same as implements admitted to be of human origin. 
They are exhibited there to show, not so much that they are human im- 
plements, as that they form a portion of a deposit from which human 
implements might be struck, and in that view they are interesting. I cannot 
conceive any one putting forth the hypothesis that these things are of human 
origin; they are merely fractured stones, like other fractured stones ; but this 
does not upset the conclusions drawn from one or two that have had a different 
origin, and, unless we are prepared to give up all evidence or reasoning on 
these matters, we are bound to accept as genuine the implements of the 
palaeolithic age which are claimed by the experts to be of human origin. 
The first speaker has asked where is the proof that these things are genuine, 
and has spoken of the necessity of pedigrees. The pedigree of the things 
in the late Mr. Christy’s museum is well assured; Mr. Christy, besides 
being conscientious, was a very good observer, and so was his friend, 
M. Lartet. Both had been taken in by frauds and impostures, and had 
become very cautious, and the result was that they received only as 
genuine things which were taken out under their own eyes, and then they 
saw the labels pasted on them with the names and dates. The same plan 
was followed by Mr. Evans, in the Blackmore Museum, and by Mr. Prestwich, 
at Abbeville; so that all these things can be traced by an exact pedigree 
to the locality and the soirrce whence they came. Just as there is capa- 
bility of proof for everything that came from Mycense, Troy, and Pompeii. 
'With regard to the story these things tell in reference to chronology, I do 
not feel prepared to go into that matter fully at this hour. I have said the 
accumulation of the Axe Valley was one going entirely beyond the reach of 
nresent causes ; but they are accumulations wliich may have taken place since 
man has come upon the earth. As a similar instance I may mention that I 
was the other day at the Bluffs of the Missouri, and high up those Bluffs, 
towards the interesting regions of the Dakota territory, far above the height 
to which man can now reach, in a position to which it would be very difficult, 
if not impossible to climb, inscriptions are written in a picture-language 
unknown to any of the existing tribes of North American Indians. This is of 
a piece with the evidence we get all over western Europe to the effect that, 
since the advent of man there has been at least one great physical change, 
which, whether slowly or rapidly produced, has amounted to something like a 
cataclysm. There have been very great changes of this kind ; and, feeling 
that this has been the case, I have no difficulty with regard to the age of 
those implements, which were made and deposited antecedent to the occur- 
rence of that cataclysm. The time antecedent to the latter must have been 
that during which men dwelt on the earth, as these things prove. It is im- 
possible to show that some four or five thousand years would have been 
insufficient to have effected all this. We have no historical testimony against 
such an opinion, nor have we any geological facts against the supposition. 
Some five thousand years ago, man may have come on our shores, then out- 
skirts of the known world, and lived just as man does now in some parts of 
North America, Africa, and elsewherCj and used the kind of flint implements 
