142 Primaeval Man in the Valley of the Lea.
long is it since this Flustra lived in the sea, and particles of
silex gathered round it and enclosed its form in this flint ?
How long since that sea-bottom was upheaved and became a
chalky down ? How did the glacier or the melting ice break
up the chalk and set the flint free for the Palaeolithic imple-
ment-maker to find ? How came the implement when made
to be buried under ten feet of gravel, and by what curious
chance was it that thousands of years afterwards I walked
into that Clapton gravel-pit and saw the implement embedded
with the constituent stones of the drift in the pit-side?
There is not an implement in my collection but plainly
speaks and questions of facts like the above. I could easily
occupy a long evening by repeating the things the imple-
ments suggest—and not only suggest, but often prove to the
careful student.
We have now come to the point where the men themselves
must be mentioned ; but how can the man be described when
we have not even got his bony framework ? Prof. W. Boyd
Dawkins tells us that the bones of drift-men at present found
are insufficient to build up a single skeleton, and I should not
be far wrong if I said that up to the present time there has
not been a fragment of man's bony fabric that can with
positive certainty be referred to man of the River Drift.
There is doubt about the authenticity of the osseous relics
referred to River Drift man, and uncertainty regarding the
circumstances of finding. It must be understood that I do
not refer to men of the Caves, but to the far older tribes who
lived on the river-margins and others who lived before the
present rivers flowed.
We know, then, the primaeval men were men as we
now understand men to be, men with thinking heads, with
correct eyes for beautiful and true forms, and with uncom-
monly skilful fingers for the difficult task of making orna-
mental and useful tools out of very intractable materials.
We know that they chiefly lived in the open air, on stony
river-banks, and that they picked up the stones at their feet
wherewith to make their weapons and tools. We know
that primaeval man lived in company with the Mammoth,