Of the many fields of enquiry opened out by the immense mental activity of this century, there is none which promises to be more fruitful than that which has been won by the joint labours of the geologist, the biologist, and the student of prehistoric archæology. The geologist, beginning his story of the earth at the time when the rains first descended and the seas first began to beat on the coast lines, has laid as it were on a map before us the revolutions in climate and geography that it has undergone. He tells us of continents submerged, and of ocean bottoms lifted up into mountains, and that more rapidly than was formerly supposed, and he points out to us that side by side with the ever-changing conditions of life there were everchanging living forms. Group after group pass before the field of vision, each connected with that which preceded it, and each bearing more and more highly differentiated features until man, “Homo sapiens,” appears, the last born, as well as the highest and noblest of creatures. This has been the work of the biologist; while the prehistorian in the meanwhile has raised the study of man's early work and industries to the rank of a science by the use of a purely inductive method, and has accumulated materials which enable us to establish a fairly complete sequence of events, and as fresh discoveries are continually being made, this sequence becomes more and more complete from the earliest dawn of man's intellect to the foreground of the borders of history.

I propose in this address to give you some account of my work during the past two or three years bearing on the difficult problems of prehistoric chronology. You may remember that to the first number of the “Proceedings” I contributed a paper on this subject. Since that time I have been continuously occupied with it, and I believe I have made some advance, both as regards facts and as regards theory.

It will be within the recollection of you all, that in the paper alluded to, the fact round which everything else pivoted was the striation of certain classes of neolithic flints. The cardinal fact to which I would call attention to-day is the occurrence of other classes of presumably neolithic flints which show the striking peculiarity of being patinated on one side only, or if both sides are patinated, one side is very much more so than the other. My attention was drawn to the peculiarity in this way: For some time past large numbers of flint implements and flakes have been brought to me by the labourers on an estate a few miles from Icklingham.

Let me congratulate you on the formation of this Society. It is high time that here in England we should begin to draw together, in one district at any rate, those who are interesting themselves in the absorbing but difficult study of the early ages of the human race before the dawn of history.

There can be no question but that of late years our country has dropped behind some of its neighbours in the attention paid to the subject, and it is time that we began to wake up. Forty years ago we were in the forefront. Evans was producing his immortal work on the “Ancient Stone Implements of Great Britain.” Christy, in collaboration with his great French confrere Lartet, was carrying out the investigations in the cave deposits of Dordogne which weie the principal foundation for the generalisations of Gabriel de Mortillet, that, with many additions due to French workers, hold their own to-day. Lartet and Christy's work was summed up in the important volume of “Reliquiae Aquitanicae,” published in 1875. Pengelley was carrying on his masterly investigation of the deposits in Kent's Cavern at Torquay; whilst Boyd Dawkins was, with others, digging in Hie caves of Derbyshire and Yorkshire, and proving the existence thus far North of the cave-men of Palaeolithic age, hitherto associated chiefly with the Dordogne district.