In the shell-mounds the fauna implies a date rather more recent than that of the lake-dwellings.

15. If we desire specific figures, the archæologists have undertaken to give them to us. The calculation of M. Morlot, based on the position of the relics found in the gravel cone at the mouth of the Tinière, and accepted by Sir John Lubbock, mentions 6,400 years as the time which has probably elapsed since the stone age was in progress at that point. M. De Ferry estimates the date to have been from 4,000 to 5,000 years ago. M. Arcelin fixes it at between 3,600 and 6,700 years ago. Professor Worsaae, in his Primeval Antiquities of Denmark, thinks it was, perhaps, some 3,000 years ago.

16. It is very certain that the more advanced races in Italy were at this time in the possession of the metals. We know this because we find bronze, and glass, and Mediterranean wheat at the oldest of the lake-dwellings.

17. It would in my judgment be a liberal estimate to allow 4,000 years as the lapse of time since the foundation of Robenhausen and Meilen; and that is (approximately) the date of the close of the glacial epoch in Scandinavia and Scotland.

18. When the ice-line shut out man from the countries under consideration, paleolithic man, along with the mammoth, and the cave-bear, and the reindeer, lived in the south of England, in France, and in Germany. The glacial conditions had terminated in this southerly region, but still continued in Denmark and north of about 54° latitude in England. Palæolithic man was thus post-glacial as regards the region which he inhabited, but lived during the continuance of the glacial epoch in the north. The closing storm of the quaternary period terminated the glacial epoch in the north, and was characterized in the non-glaciated region to the south by the paleolithic flood, by which southern England and the northern part of the continent were submerged at least several hundred feet. After this we find at least very rare traces of the mammoth (although the reindeer still lingered until the beginning of our era), and we enter upon the inauguration of the polished stone age-man advancing into Scotland and Scandinavia.

19. The transportation of erratics continued in Sweden down to a yet later date. Sir Charles Lyell observed near Upsala a ridge of stratified sand and gravel, containing a layer of marl evidently formed at the bottom of the Baltic by the slow growth of the mussel, cockle, and other marine species, all of which were of dwarfish size, like those now inhabiting the brackish waters of this sea. These dwarfish shells are not found in the North Sea, nor are they found in the

Danish shell-mounds. The exclusion of the waters of the North Sea from the Baltic, with which they formerly communicated by a strait across southern Sweden, caused the waters of the Baltic to lose a great proportion of their saltness, and occasioned the deterioration in the marine fauna on the east of Sweden. This change in the size of the marine shells has occurred since this strait was closed, and since the creation of the shell-mounds on the Danish coast. Now, the ridge in question, observed by Sir C. Lyell, is 100 feet above the Gulf of Bothnia, and on the top of it repose several huge erratics, which must have come into their present position since the Baltic was divided from the North Sea, and since the epoch of the Danish shell-mounds, in one of the oldest of which an object of bronze has been found.

20. A similar case to this has been observed in Scotland by Mr. James Smith, of Jordanhill, who found a large boulder on the lowest ancient beach of the west of Scotland, which in his opinion could only have come there on floating ice. In the estuarine silt of the corresponding beach on the east coast have been found the bones of the Greenland whale associated

with human implements. The presence of this Greenland whale corroborates the testimony of the boulder as to the Arctic character of the climate on these coasts at this time, and we are enabled to form some idea of the probable period when this severe climate prevailed in Scotland from the character of the objects found in the silt of the Carse of Stirling, and with the ancient canoes dug up from the banks of the Clyde. Some of these objects must necessarily have come from the more civilized regions of the Mediterranean.

21. The recent transportation of these erratics illustrates and strengthens my main argument for the recent date of the glacial epoch; for while this epoch had at this time passed away, the seas were still invaded by floating ice, and the climate of the Caledonian coasts had by no means become what it is now. And we learn that no great lapse of time is necessarily involved in such a change of climate.

22. I have mentioned that in Switzerland, among the mass of the Alps, where the ice lingered as late as it did in the north, there are also no traces of paleolithic man, and that in proportion as we recede from this glaciated area we encounter the indications of the presence of man. Now, there is just outside of this Alpine region, near the eastern extremity of the Lake of Constance, a station of paleolithic date, called Schussenried. The fauna and flora observed here were Arctic in character, and the only remains of the extinct animals were

the worked horns of the reindeer. These, we are told, with needles of bone and objects manufactured of nephrite were found in the glacial clay." The palaeolithic hunters had advanced up to the margin of the ice; they left their relics, mingled with the remains of Arctic plants, to be buried beneath the glacial clays. The date of this occupation was, no doubt, just prior to the melting of the Alpine glacier. When that occurred, those who succeeded them advanced into the now habitable valleys of the Swiss mountains, and constructed their pile-villages in the lakes. The settlers at Schussenried had come, as we may suppose, from Asia, and had either brought with them the objects of nephrite which (as in the cave of Chaleux, in Belgium) were found among their relics, or they had obtained them by barter from other wanderers from the region of Turkestan or the yet more distant shores of the Lake of Baikal. This nephrite is found nowhere in Europe, and its presence at Schussenried and Chaleux proves conclusively that the cave-men of Europe had relations with the Turanian tribes of Central Asia. We find

it again, in numerous instances, in the stone age lake-dwellings, showing that the lake-dwellers also had wandered originally from the same distant homes. Is it likely that this traffic between Europe and the Orient existed 100,000 years ago?

23. There is a cave on the northern frontier of Switzerland, near Schaffhausen, which bears the same aspect as Schussenried, and where paleolithic man seems, as it were, to hover on the confines of the neolithic age. I refer to the Kesslerloch. It was here that was obtained, mingled with the bones of the mammoth, musk-ox, reindeer, glutton, lion, &c., that beautiful drawing of the browsing reindeer which is given in M. Conrad Merk's work on the excavations which he conducted at this point; and here the same explorer obtained from the same palæolithic beds the bones of the tame ox, the tame pig, and probably the dog. The remains of the dog were also obtained at the neighbouring cavern of Freundenthal, while a good deal of pottery," we are told, was found in the cave near Herblingen, in the same region. At Veyrier, on the shores of the lake of Geneva, another paleolithic cave, we observe the absence of the mammoth and rhinoceros, and the presence of the domesticated ox. The fauna is, however, as at the Kesslerloch and Schussenried, an Arctic fauna. Itconsisted of the reindeer, horse, ox, hog, stag, chamois, marmot, Alpine bear, wolf, &c.

24. These caves indicate that in Central Europe paleolithic man stood outside of this glaciated area of the Alps, advancing

gradually to the foot of the glacier, and possessing by the time he reached the confines of Switzerland some of the domestic animals, vessels of pottery, and beautiful weapons; executing drawings and carvings superior to those from the caves of Périgord; and maintaining commercial relations with his distant kinsmen in Asia. It was the closing years of the paleolithic age; when we encounter man in this region again he has become a lake-dweller; a great storm has passed over Europe; new settlers, doubtless, have come from the great Mongol hives; the mammoth has disappeared-not absolutely overwhelmed, we may suppose, by some sudden catastrophe, as in Siberia, but-gradually exterminated by the new climatal conditions.

25. It is not only not improbable, but it is highly probable, that the men, as well as the animals, of the paleolithic age occasionally passed into glaciated areas, just as we see now on the coasts of Greenland. It may be that this is the explanation of the presence of the bones of the hyæna, mammoth, &c., in the Victoria cave, just beyond that frontier-line which I have indicated in the north of England. Here, too, I may mention, all under the glacial clay, as Mr. Tiddeman reports, were found also the bones of the goat (some of them apparently cut) and the Bos longifrons or Celtic short-horn, analogous to the presentation at the Kesslerloch and Freundenthal.

26. Thus, too, we account for the presence of the mammoth and the reindeer in the so-called inter-glacial beds of Scotland. 27. It was mentioned by one of the speakers-I forget now who-at the Stockholm Congress of Archæologists in 1874 that, astonishing as it appeared, several polished stone implements had been found in the boulder-clay somewhere in Sweden. The case is doubtless reported in the proceedings of the Congress. The statement was received with incredulity; but it is no more impossible than that some Eskimo weapon should hereafter be found in a similar deposit in Greenland. Observe, however, that it was a man of the polished stone age who had ventured into this region of the ice. If the case may be relied on, it throws fresh light on my argument for the contemporaneous existence of the glacial epoch and the age of polished stone; it proves that the polished stone age was well under way, and that the men of that period waited with impatience for the still reluctant ice to relax its grasp on the Scandinavian peninsula-or rather, as southern Sweden was then, the isle of Scand.

28. The only possible answer that can be made to all this is, that there was a great chasm-a lost interval of vast duration-between the paleolithic and neolithic ages; that man

suddenly vanished from Europe at the close of the paleolithic age, and did not re-appear here until the neolithic age, when he entered Europe for the second time with some of his stone implements polished. In the interim there is no trace of man or beast. The statement is sufficient to refute the hypothesis. It supposes that (say) 100,000 years ago man (who had previously spread over nearly the whole continent) was annihilated in (or driven out of) Europe; and that he did not again set his foot here for about 95,000 years, when he suddenly appeared in sufficient numbers to re-occupy his deserted huntinggrounds, and to advance even farther north. Now, of course, it is necessary to explain in some sort where man was during this interregnum of the race in Europe. Why was Europe abandoned? Was it uninhabitable? Was there a similar interval in India, where we are told palæolithic implements have been found, and in America, where it is claimed they have also been found? Was the climate of Europe more severe than it had been in the Reindeer Epoch through which man had just lived, and which, according to archæology, was the most brilliant era in paleolithic times? Or did the being who presses now close upon the Pole, in Greenland and Siberia, find Europe too inhospitable during this 95,000 years for the adventurous spirit of a single colony?

29. There is no trace of the fauna of such a period. Where are the remains of the animals that lived in Europe during these 900 centuries? Or, did the beast of the field, as well as man, abandon the continent? Europe, we know, was by no means without its mammalian fauna, even during the terrible Reign of Ice; and the bones of the mammoth and the reindeer are found, we are told, even in the till of Scotland. Neither frost nor flood expelled or exterminated animal life then, and why should the country have been uninhabited after the glacial and post-glacial epochs when their harsh conditions had passed away?

30. Nor are there any geological formations corresponding to any such period. On the palaeolithic beds of the caves rest the neolithic beds; and on the gravels rests the peat.

31. A good deal has been said about the change in the fauna; but the present fauna of Siberia is almost identical with that in the same region in the days of the mammoth, and the change from the severe climate of the post-glacial epochto the present mild climate accounts for the absence of many of the animals common in Europe at that time. As for the animals now peculiar to warmer regions, the cave-hyæna and the cave-lion are both admitted now to belong to existing species; and the remains of the former (as well as the African