212 
through higher and yet more highly organized beings, to the 
“man-like apes,” and from them across an unmeasured and 
unmeasurable gulf to man in his lowest estate as a bestial 
savage. The other theory attempts to trace intellectual man 
backwards through successive stages of degradation and savage- 
dom to the “first being worthy of being called a man. At 
this point these two lines of research meet : they are s iU j PP^ed 
mutually to support each other, and the origin o m 
i„«« Bone-cav, .< .* * * § « 
Hill Brixham, in 1858, is said to have given a great impulse to 
these theories of man’s origin, and it was decided to av 
thorough and systematic examination of its contents. The 
Z™loc«, L* ... of on. I 
towards defraying the expenses, on condition that the re 
discovered should be deposited for inspection m the British 
Museum “a committee of geologists was char 0 e 
Investigations, amongst whom Mr. Prestwich and Dr. 
Falconer took an active part, visiting Toi quay win 
cavations were in progress under the superintendence of 
M W^ en iWts + of the exploration led Sir C ^ rl ^ S ^valet- 
state, at the meeting of the British _ Association foi • fte Advance 
ment of Science in 1859, as follows The facts recently 
brought to light during the systematic investlgatl °? that 
Brixham Cave must, I think, have prepared y° u ^t ^hat 
scepticism in regard to the cave evidence ^extreme ”t 
antiquity of man had previously been pushed to an extreme. I 
And Mr. Prestwich, writing m the same year, say . 
■was not until I had myself witnessed th e cond *“ ns ™} e 
which these flint implements had been found at Brixham that 
I became fully impressed with the validity of the doubts thrown 
L the previously prevailing opinions with respect to such 
re i;fMcon"r S 'lppears to have been so convinced by the 
Brixham evidence that he specially visited Abbeville to aspect 
the so called flint implements collected by Boucher de f ertnes 
from°the gravel-beds^ of the Valley of the Somme whose dis- 
coveries had hitherto been ignored or treated with den^m^ 
and he was thus led to adopt the opinion that the Somme 
* These relics are now, 1874, in the possession of the Geological Society. 
-Ed 
+ Antiquity of Man (1st ed. p. 98). 
i Report of British Association , p. 93. 
§ Philosophical Transactions, p. 280. 
