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VIII] The next question we have put—What light do these submerged forests throw on the antiquity of man in Britain, or on the race-problems of Britain?—is a difficult one to answer in the present state of our knowledge. Valuable evidence has been lost through the failure to preserve most of the human remains that have been found; but both Owen and Huxley recognised the peculiar type of the "river-drift man." Unfortunately few implements have been collected, and the pieces of wood shaped by man, though recorded, have not been preserved. One implement of polished stone has certainly been found in the latest submerged land-surface, but it is not clear that any thing except flakes has been obtained in the older deposits. Still the stratigraphical relations seem to indicate that all these deposits are of Neolithic age and later than the Palaeolithic terraces. The relations of Palaeolithic to Neolithic are still very obscure in this country, and the reason is perhaps to be sought in a submergence which has tended to carry many of the transition deposits beneath the sea-level, or has caused them to be silted up under more modern alluvium. The lowest submerged forest requires careful search before we can be certain of its true position in the sequence; but it is seldom exposed, and then only in dock-excavations soon again hidden.

Before we can attempt to answer the other questions, it is important to get an estimate of the