surface features of the country, demanding for their accomplishment a
great lapse of time, is furnished by the Isle of Wight. That island is
now separated from the mainland by a narrow channel, called the South
Hampton Water, or the Solent Sea.

It is now known that this is nothing but an old river channel, in
which the sea has usurped the place of the river. The coast is a
river embankment, with the usual accompaniments of gravel beds, flint
implements, and fresh water shells. On the shores of the island we find
the opposite bank of the old river. A very great change must have taken
place in the surface features before the sea could have rolled in and
cut off the Isle of Wight from the mainland.

In speaking of the length of time demanded for this change, Dr. Evans
says: "Who can fully understand how immeasurably remote was the epoch
when what is now that vast bay was high and dry land, and a long range
of chalk downs, six hundred feet above the sea, bounded the horizon on
the South? And yet that must have been the sight that met the eye of
primitive man who frequented the banks of that ancient river, which
buried their handiwork in gravels that now cap the cliffs--and of the
course of which so strange and indubitable a memorial subsists in what
has now become the Solent Sea?"<37>

The illustrations scattered through this essay are representations of
the stone implements found in the drift of European rivers. During all
the long course of time supposed to be covered by the Paleolithic Age,
there are but very few evidences of any improvement, as far as we can
judge from the implements themselves. This is in itself a melancholy
proof of the low condition of man. He had made so little advance in
the scale of wisdom, he possessed so little knowledge, he was so much a
creature of instinct, that, during the thousands of years demanded
for this age, he made no appreciable progress. The advance of the last
century was many times greater than that of the entire Paleolithic Age.
A blow struck on one end of a piece of flint will, owing to the peculiar
cleavage of flint, split off pieces called flakes. This is the simplest
form of implement used by man. It is impossible to say with certainty
how they were used; but, from the evidence observed on them, they were
probably used as scrapers. The men of that day doubtless knew some
simple method of preparing clothing from the skins of the animals they
had killed, and probably many