Abstract
No subject of modern scientific inquiry is more important than the series of deposits in which geology comes in contact with the period of human history. This must be my apology for some of the seemingly trivial details contained in the following paper. When these observations were begun, nothing could be further from my thoughts than any reference to the antiquity of man. But I shall perhaps best introduce the subject by simply narrating the way in which I was led forward step by step, till the whole inquiry assumed the form in which it is here presented.