352 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The absence of all traces of a marine fauna, and the occasional 

 presence of land and fresh-water shells in these beds, are circum- 

 stances on which much stress is laid by the author ; but, when fully 

 considered, they hardly seem to warrant the inferences drawn from 

 them. A marine fauna requires a marine flora for its sustenance, and, 

 unless the submergence had been of long duration, this could not have 

 existed. We find extensive marine deposits of older date, in which 

 no marine organisms are ever seen ; and, if marine fossils are wanting 

 in drift-beds, those of the land and fresh water are usually equally 

 wanting. We have, probably, hundreds of square miles of quater- 

 nary gravels, in which not a single specimen has ever been discovered. 

 In those instances, comparatively rare, in which they occur in the im- 

 plement-bearing beds, they are usually lying above the gravel, and 

 may thus be ascribed to a later date ; or, if of an earlier date in some 

 instances, their occurrence would not of necessity exclude diluvial 

 action, as regards the gravels. 



There is one interesting topic connected with these drifts, which 

 Mr. Evans has not dealt with at any length, as, indeed, it barely came 

 within the design of his work; but he seems to share the general opin- 

 ion that the men who made and used the drift-implements were con- 

 temporary with the hippopotamus, elephant, rhinoceros, and other 

 animals, with whose remains they are often found associated. At 

 present this is but a possibility, and it is an assumption founded on 

 the fact of the bones and implements being often found in close prox- 

 imity; but, if, as seems probable, the implements were formed from 

 stones found in the gravels in which they now rest, it can hardly be 

 doubted that the bones were already in that gravel, and may have 

 lain there for centuries. From their shattered and way-worn condi- 

 tion, they have evidently been subjected to much rougher usage than 

 that which some of the flint implements have met with. But, however 

 this may have been, there can be no doubt, as Sir Charles Lyell has 

 observed in the "Antiquity of Man," that "the fabrication of the im- 

 plements must have preceded the reiterated degradation which re- 

 sulted in the formation of the overlying beds;" a process for which 

 vast periods must be allowed, and one which must have involved im- 

 portant geological changes. Among others we have very strong rea- 

 sons to believe was the severance of our island from the Continent, an 

 event, indeed, which, however brought about, could hardly have been 

 unattended with important changes in the contour of the adjacent dis- 

 tricts, and the courses of their rivers. When we contemplate the vast 

 changes, geological, paleontological, and geographical, which our race 

 seems to have survived, we are surprised to learn how very old we are, 

 or, as Mr. Evans has better expressed it, the mind is almost lost in 

 amazement at the vista of antiquity thus displayed. 



It would seem, as might be expected, that, notwithstanding the 

 cosmopolitan character of these objects for, as Mr. Evans's researches 



