But there had been a still earlier period of the stone age,
when yet ruder tribes of men lived in our parts of the world,
when the climate and the face of the country were strangely
different from the present state of things. On the slopes of
river valleys such as that of the Ouse, in England, and the
Somme, in France, 50 or loo feet above the present river-
banks, and thus altogether out of the reach of any flood
now, there are beds of so-called drift gravel. Out of these
beds have been dug numerous rude implements of flint,



I.] MAN, ANCIENT AND MODERN. 29

chipped into shape by the hands of men who had gained
no mean dexterity in the art, as any one will find who will
try his hand at making one, with any tools he thinks fit
The most remarkable implements of this earlier stone age
are the picks or hatchets shown in Fig. 2. The coarseness
of their finish, and the absence of any signs of grinding
even at the edges of hacking or cutting instruments, show
that the makers had not come nearly to the skill of the later




Fit a,— Enter Slose A-e (paTaolUhic) flint picks or butchcD.
