of
that epoch.

You will have heard of the interesting discoveries recently made, in
various parts of Western Europe, of flint implements, obviously worked
into shape by human hands, under circumstances which show conclusively
that man is a very ancient denizen of these regions.

It has been proved that the old populations of Europe, whose existence
has been revealed to us in this way, consisted of savages, such as the
Esquimaux are now; that, in the country which is now France, they
hunted the reindeer, and were familiar with the ways of the mammoth
and the bison. The physical geography of France was in those days
different from what it is now--the river Somme, for instance, having
cut its bed a hundred feet deeper between that time and this; and it
is probable that the climate was more like that of Canada or Siberia
than that of Western Europe.

The existence of these people is forgotten even in the traditions of
the oldest historical nations. The name and fame of them had utterly
vanished until a few years back; and the amount of physical change
which has been effected since their day renders it more than probable
that, venerable as are some of the historical nations, the workers of
the chipped flints of Hoxne or of Amiens are to them, as they are to
us, in point of antiquity.

But, if we assign to these hoar relics of long-vanished generations of
men the greatest age that can possibly be claimed for them, they are
not older than the drift, or boulder clay, which, in comparison with
the chalk, is but a very juvenile deposit. You need go no further than
your own seaboard for evidence of this fact. At one of the most
charming spots on the coast of Norfolk, Cromer, you will see the
boulder clay forming a vast mass, which lies upon the chalk, and must
consequently have come into existence after it. Huge boulders of chalk
are, in fact, included in the clay, and have evidently been brought to
the position they now occupy by the same agency as that which has
planted blocks of syenite from Norway side by side with them.

The chalk, then, is certainly older than the boulder clay. If you ask
how much, I will again take you no further than the same spot upon
your own coasts for evidence. I have spoken of the boulder clay and
drift as resting upon the chalk. That is not strictly true. Interposed
between the chalk and the drift is a comparatively insignificant
layer, containing vegetable matter. But that layer tells a wond