51 
portant subject, now agitating all thinking minds, the whole evidence of 
this period must be collected and weighed. To conquer a portion of the 
field may be useful, but the whole must be conquered before perfect satisfac- 
tion can be felt. 
S. R. Pattison, Esq., F.G.S.— My opinions agree rather with those of 
Mr. Evans than those of Mr. Whitley ; but having examined the known 
collections of flint implements, I do not think the facts established by them 
really militate against Scripture statement or Scripture chronology. True, 
those who with other views seek to advocate a theory destructive of Biblical 
chronology, may adduce the facts and assume extended periods, and, the wish 
being father to the thought, argue for a contradiction. But all the facts of the 
last mammalian period, in which these evidences of man are discovered, may 
be synchronized with Scripture. The annuls of Genesis afford time for all 
the geological and palaeontological sequence, so far as the flint tool makers 
are concerned. 
THE « FLINT IMPLEMENTS IN THE VALLEY OF THE 
SOMME.” 
Being a revised and corrected report of a paper recently read by Mr. James 
Parker, F.G.S., &c.,* before the Ashmolean Society at Oxford. 
Mr. Parker said that what he proposed to do was, to point out some. of 
the links in the argument which he thought had not received the attention 
due to them in comparison with other details introduced into the chain of 
reasoning, as to the immense antiquity of the flint implements in question. 
He could not hope, indeed, he did not propose to attempt to explain, the 
many and varied phenomena presented by the Somme Valley, or to fix the 
exact age of the beds bearing the flint implements ; but he hoped at least to 
bring forward some considerations which had not been fairly discussed, and 
which, if founded upon fact, as his observations, he trusted, would show to 
be the case, militated considerably against the views which were commonly 
held, and of which Sir Charles Lyell was the chief exponent.]' He thought 
he would best consult the convenience of his audience by giving to them, in 
Sir Charles Lyell’s own words, the chief points in his argument. His work 
was practically the summing-up of what authors, both English and foreign, 
had written, together with conclusions derived from his own personal 
observations. In his book a section of the Valley of the Somme was given. 
He was sorry to say that as a matter of fact they could place no reliance 
upon it whatever, as it differed in many respects, from the actual circum- 
stances, but it was necessary to reproduce it there in order to illustrate Sir 
* Mr. Parker has kindly placed this in my hands. — [Ed.] 
t Professor Kirk, in his Age of Man, p. 23, takes the same view as Mr. 
Parker. — [Ed.] 
E 2 
