Many now living remember the time (for it is little more than twenty years ago) when the antiquity of man, as now understood, was universally discredited. Not only theologians, but even geologists then taught us, that man belonged altogether to the existing state of things; that the extinct animals of the Tertiary period had finally disappeared, and that the earth’s surface had assumed its present condition before the human race first came into existence. So prepossessed were even scientific men with this idea--which yet rested on purely negative evidence, and could not be supported by any arguments of scientific value--that numerous facts which had been presented at intervals for half a century, all tending to prove the existence of man at very remote epochs, were silently ignored; and, more than this, the detailed statements of three distinct and careful observers confirming each other, were rejected by a great scientific Society as too improbable for publication, only because they proved (if they were true) the coexistence of man with extinct animals.[54] [54] In 1854 (?) a communication from the Torquay Natural-History Society confirming previous accounts by Mr. Godwin-Austen, Mr. Vivian, and the Rev. Mr. M‘Enery, that worked flints occurred in Kent’s Hole with remains of extinct species, was rejected as too improbable for publication. But this state of belief in opposition to facts, could not long continue. In 1859 a few of our most eminent geologists examined for themselves into the alleged occurrence of flint implements in the gravels of the north of France, which had been made public fourteen years before, and found them strictly correct. The caverns of Devonshire were about the same time carefully examined by equally eminent observers, and were found fully to bear out the statements of those who had published their results eighteen years before. Flint implements began to be found in all suitable localities in the south of England, when carefully searched for, often in gravels of equal antiquity with those of France. Caverns giving evidence of human occupation at various remote periods were explored in Belgium and the south of France--lake-dwellings were examined in Switzerland--refuse-heaps in Denmark--and thus a whole series of remains have been discovered carrying back the history of mankind from the earliest historic periods to a long distant past.