The uncovering of prehistory is probably the most dramatic chapter of natural history, full of incident and intrigue, as well as of human tragedy. If the evidence of prehistory is examined with the eye of the professional student it acquires an uncanny reality. It emerges from the museums, the cabinets of specimens and the libraries, dissipating the mists of ignorance that obscure the epochs of human and cultural evolution by which the fate of our world has been decided.