Page:Antiquity of Man as Deduced from the Discovery of a Human Skeleton.djvu/23

Rh The existence of Mankind in what now is insular Britain, at a period which Geology teaches to have keen prior to its severance from the great Europæo-Asiatic continent by the "English" and "German" channels or seas, when our present Thames bore a larger stream of water probably to join some greater continental river, has been evidenced by the discovery of stone implements and weapons of the rude manufacture which has suggested the term "palæolithic" for such tools and the men who fashioned them.

The most abundant evidence in support of the foregoing proposition has been given by an esteemed colleague, Worthington G. Smith, Esq., F.L.S., in the 'Transactions of the Essex Field-Club'.

This evidence has been mainly derived from formations on the west bank of the Lea valley, north side of the Thames; but besides the "Lea" tributary, the author adds the localities of Barking, East Ham, Ilford, Grays-Thurrock, Tilbury, Mucking, Orsett, and Southend. At all these places Mr. Smith has "found the stone tools in situ" ; and he gives valuable and instructive evidence of the respective formations in "Cuts of the Sections" where they occur, especially in the Lea valley (figs. 2–8). But no bodily evidence of the fabricators of the Palæolithic tools rewarded this persevering series of researches.

"Human bones and teeth I have never been able to light on. The reasons why human bones are not found amongst the fossils of mammoth, horse, bison, and reindeer are many. Human bones are very liable to decay;