342 TJic Amcrira/i Geologist. June, i!-98 
of our knowledge must be considered out of date and can only 
prove futile. The great length of "neolithic" time, on which 
Sir John has rightly laid much stress, utterly precludes suc- 
cess. The postglacial evolution of neolithic man to higher 
stages of civilization, the emergence of the bronze-culture 
and its gradual disappearance before that of iron, the spread 
of neolithic art over not merely the eastern but the western 
world, assuming its origin in, the former, the slowness and 
the smallness of every advancing step induce the archaeologist 
to claim for neolithic man all that the geologist can allow him 
of post-glacial time. And even this will probably prove too 
short. 
The attempt to explain away or to invalidate the evidence 
that has at various times comes to light, especially in recent 
years, in favor of a yet greater antiquity for man than that 
implied by the term "interglacial" reminds one of the similar 
efforts made thirty years ago to refute the evidence of M. 
Boucher de Perthes. These Sir John holds up to well merited 
derision when he says: 
While one class of objectors accounts for the configuration of the 
Hint implements from the gravels by some unknown chemical agency, 
by the violent and continuous gyratory action of water, by fracture re- 
sulting from pressure, by rapid cooling when hot or rapid heating when 
cold, and even regarded them as aberrant forms of fossil fishes, others 
adopted the view that the worked flints had either been introduced into 
the beds at a comparatively recent date or that the gravel was a mere 
modern alluvium. 
Some of the objections that have been urged of late against 
the specimens that indicate the existence of man in England 
in days even preglacial will in time to come probably seem 
as irrelevant, if not as absurd, as those quoted above. The 
same may possibly be true of some objections against traces 
of early man in the western world.* 
Another expression may be noted in the same address 
where the distinguished author expresses unwillingness to ac- 
*It may readily be admitted that m thousands of cases it is im- 
possible to distinguish natural fracture from the handiwork of man. 
But setting these aside there is little doubt left after examination of 
a large number of specimens. The writer, many years ago, examined 
thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of broken flints in the upper 
valley of the Thames, but he never found any such collection of chipped 
specimens as those shown him by Sir Joseph Prestwich in his collec- 
tion from the plateaux of Kent. 
