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Rh organic continuity of life throughout the successive geological periods was proved and accepted.

The influence of this drastic clearance of antiquated machinery in geology soon extended to the collateral sciences, and the first to benefit from the improved methods was archæology.

The discoveries of Kjøkkenmøddings (Kitchen-middens) in Denmark and lake-dwellings in Switzerland, with the vast and varied wealths of prehistoric materials which they brought to light, began now, also, to attract universal attention. Owing to the more rigid and scientific methods adopted in collateral researches, archæology proper, independent of its new-born palæolithic phase, had acquired a wider significance than formerly. The common borderland between geology and anthropology was being better understood, especially as regards the glacial period. Above all, the antiquarian dilettantism of earlier days and the unbending attitude of so-called orthodoxy began to have less influence on the philosophic mind, so that the new doctrine fell on a somewhat congenial and receptive soil in which it soon took permanent root.