3 
“age of stone” to the period of the “ Scotch fir,” that of “bronze” 
to the period of the “ oak,” and the “ iron age ” to the period of 
the “beech.” 
The discussion of all such questions is, of course, foreign to the 
purpose of a mere catalogue like the present, which is written for 
the purpose of describing the objects exhibited in such a manner 
that visitors unacquainted with geology or archaeology may not 
entirely lose the interest with which those sciences invest such 
everyday things as stones and flints. 
CASE P. 
This Case contains a series of Flint Implements from the Drift, 
for the geological character and description of which formation see 
catalogue of Cases M. N. and O. 
It is well known that the discovery of such implements as those 
exhibited has created great and needless uneasiness in the minds 
of many. Some have taken alarm at the antiquity which has in 
consequence been assigned to the existence of the human race. 
They are willing to subscribe to the co-existence of man with 
certain extinct mammalia, but are disposed to hold that geologists 4 
may have miscalculated the age of the drift beds, and consequently 
have reasoned upon erroneous data. This is a legitimate, and, 
within due bounds, a good objection; but it is unwise to advance 
such an argument until the geological evidence already accumulated 
on the point has been duly examined and weighed. 
Other persons are more reckless, and disregarding the patient 
and careful investigation which has been conducted by such men 
as Lyell, Prestwich, Evans, Christy, and Lubbock—men who, so 
to speak, have sifted the evidence through their own hands, and 
who, moreover, approached the subject with minds stored with 
the peculiar branches of knowledge fitting them for their work— 
disregarding all this, there are those who affirm boldly, upon pos¬ 
sibly a most superficial glance at the subject, that man did not 
co-exist with the Mammoth and these other extinct mammals, for 
say they no human bones have been found in the same beds with 
the remains of those animals. Have such persons dispassionately 
read the. account given by Dr. Schmerling of the discovery of a 
human skull in juxta-position with the upper molar of the Elephas 
primigenius in the caverns of Engis ? or of the human jaw found 
by M. de Yibraye in a cavern near Arcy, in the lowest and undis¬ 
turbed bed in the cave, which also contained numerous remains of 
the Rhinoceros tichorhinus , Ursus spelceus , and Hyaena spelcea ? 
How few human bones have been discovered upon the numerous 
sites of the lake settlements in Switzerland. Here was a people, 
actually living over the water for centuries, and yet it is by man’s 
works rather than by his remains that the Swiss lake beds speak 
to us in unmistakeable tones of a pre-historic people, who culti¬ 
vated wheat and barley, spun and wove flax, and possessed domes- 
