British Association, 395 



the higli antiquity of the human productions, for that proof is 

 independent of organic evidence or fossil remains, and is based on 

 physical data. A& was stated to us last year by Sir C. Lyell, 

 we should still have to allow time for great denudation of the 

 chalk, and the removal from place to place, and the spreading 

 out over the length and breadth of a large valley of heaps of chalk 

 flints in beds from 10 to 15 feet in thickness, covered by loams 

 and sands of equal thickness, these last often tranquilly deposited, 

 all of which operations would require the supposition of a great 

 lapse of time. 



That the mammalia Fauna, preserved under such circumstances? 

 should be found to diverge from the type now established in 

 the same region, is consistent with experience ; but the fact of a 

 foreign and extinct Fauna was not needed to indicate the great 

 age of the gravel containing the worked flints. 



Another independent proof of the age of the same gravel and its 

 associated fossiliferous loam is derived from the large deposits of 

 peat above alluded to, in the Valley of the Somme, which con- 

 tain not only monuments of the Roman, but also those of an 

 older stone period, usually called Celtic. Bones, also, of the bear 

 of the species still inhabiting the Pyrenees, and of the beaver, and 

 many large stumps of trees, not yet well examined by botanists, 

 are found in the same peat, the oldest portion of which belongs to 

 times far beyond those of tradition ; yet distinguished geologists 

 are of opinion that the growth of all the vegetable matter, and 

 even the original scooping out of the hollows containing it, are 

 events long posterior in date to the gravel with flint implements 

 nay, posterior even to the formation of the uppermost of the 

 layers of loam with freshwater shells overlying the gravel. 



The exploration of caverns, both 'in the British Isles and other 

 parts of Europe, has in the last few years been prosecuted with 

 renewed ardour and success, although the theoretical explanation of 

 many of the phenomena brought to light seems as yet to baffle 

 the skill of the ablest geologists. Dr. Falconer has given us an 

 account of the remains of several hundred hippopotami, obtained 

 from one cavern,'''near Palermo, in a locality where there is now 

 no running water. The same palaeontologist, aided by Col. Wood, 

 of Glamorganshire, has recently extracted from a single cave in 

 the Gower peninsula of South Wales, a vast quantity of the an- 

 tlers of a reindeer (perhaps of two species of reindeer), both allied 

 to the livinor one. These fossils are most of them shed h orns; 



