and attracted by the sunshine and the more genial clime animals from the
Continent wandered northwards, and with them came man. Caves, now high
amongst the hills, but then on a level with the rivers, were his first
abode, and contain many relics of his occupancy, together with the bones
of extinct animals. The land appears to have risen, and the climate
became colder. The sea worked its relentless way through the chalk hills
on the south and gradually met the waves of the North Sea which flowed
over the old Rhine valley. It widened also the narrow strait that
severed the country from Ireland, and the outline and contour of the
island began more nearly to resemble that with which we are now
familiar.

A vast period of time was necessary to accomplish all these immense
changes; and it is impossible to speculate with any degree of certainty
how long that period was, which transformed the icebound surface of
our island to a land of verdure and wild forests. We must leave such
conjectures and the more detailed accounts of the glacial and
post-glacial periods to the geologists, as our present concern is
limited to the study of the habits and condition of the men who roamed
our fields and forests in prehistoric times. Although no page of history
gives us any information concerning them, we can find out from the
relics of arms and implements which the earth has preserved for us, what
manner of men lived in the old cave dwellings, or constructed their rude
huts, and lie buried beneath the vast barrows.

The earliest race of men who inhabited our island was called the
Palaeolithic race, from the fact that they used the most ancient form
of stone implements. Traces of a still earlier race are said to have
been discovered a few years ago on the chalk plateau of the North Down,
near Sevenoaks. The flints have some slight hollows in them, as if