224 ANNUAL RECORD OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 



therefore lighter than the original liquid. The compressions 

 experienced in the cooling crust of the earth are, in general, 

 the cause of the phenomena of splitting and crushing ob- 

 served among its strata. In fact, the expansion of the original 

 liquid, as it solidified, predisposes in the mass a condition 

 favorable to the phenomena of segregation, as shown in basalt 

 and in various concretions. Inaugural Diss., Halle. 



RELATION OF MAX'S EXISTENCE TO THE GLACIAL PERIOD. 



There has been a question whether man actually lived in 

 Europe before the glacial epoch, Mr. A. R. Wallace contend- 

 ing that there is no evidence of it, and that, even if he did, 

 the action of the ice-sheet would probably have obliterated 

 all record of his existence. Some light has been thrown upon 

 this problem by the results of the examination of the Victoria 

 Cave, near Settle, in Yorkshire. A careful exploration of a 

 bone-bed in the cave, situated at a considerable depth below 

 the other deposits, brought to view hyena-dung, broken bones, 

 and teeth. Among other objects found in this deposit were 

 the remains of the mammoth, two species of bear, the cave 

 hyena, the woolly rhinoceros, the bison, and the stag repre- 

 senting the fauna of the river gravels of the south of En- 



gland. 



Among the articles found was one bone which was not 

 identified at first, but which has lately been determined by 

 Mr. Busk to be a portion of an unusually clumsy human 

 fibula, similar to the same bone in the Mentone skeleton. 

 There appears to be no question of the contemporaneity of 

 this bone with those just mentioned. The most interesting 

 point connected with this discovery, however, is the fact that 

 the edge of the bed containing the human bone and those of 

 the other mammalia named is overlaid by a bed of stiff glacial 

 clay containing ice-scratched boulders. This is covered by 

 a great thickness of talus from the superincumbent cliffs, 

 which itself has been accumulating for a very long period of 

 time. This clay is probably the remains of a lateral moraine 

 left by a glacier or ice-sheet, which would show that the re- 

 mains of the older mammals and of man are of an a<re ante- 

 rior to the great ice-sheet of the Irish Sea basin. The com- 

 plete absence over co-extensive areas in the north of Europe 

 of the paleolithic implements occurring in the south seems to 



