1897.] on Early Man in Scotland. 393 



remains and implements of PalaGolithic type have been found along 

 with them in the Robin Hood cave in the Cres^swell Crags, and in 

 caverns in North and South Wales. 



When Scotland is considered, evidence of the existence of the 

 mammals of this epoch is not so abundant, yet the interglacial beds 

 of that country have yielded remains of mammoth, reindeer, Irish 

 elk, urus and horse. Bat notwithstanding the keen scrutiny to 

 which the superficial deposits in Scotland have been subjected by 

 the members of the Geological Survey and others, no traces either 

 of the bones of Palaeolithic man or of the work of his hands have been 

 discovered in North Britain. This, indeed, is not much a matter of 

 surprise, for it must be remembered that, subsequent to the genial 

 interglacial epochs another ice sheet, that of the upper boulder clay, 

 made its appearance, grinding over the surface of the land, wearing 

 away alluvia, and largely obliterating the relics of interglacial times. 

 Hence interglacial beds occur only at intervals and are very fragmen- 

 tary. Nor in Scotland are there any caves similar in dimensions to 

 those which in England and elsewhere have yielded such abundant 

 traces of Palaeolithic man and his mammalian congeners. If Palaeo- 

 lithic man ever did exist in Scotland, and there is no reason why he 

 might not have migrated northward from Yorkshire and Wales, yet 

 one could hardly expect to discover traces of his former presence. In 

 Scotland there are no massive limestones, with extensive caverns, in 

 which man could have sheltered, and in which his relics and remains 

 could have been secure from destruction during the advance of the 

 second ice sheet. It is only in the alluvial deposits of interglacial 

 times that such traces have been preserved, but these deposits, as we 

 have seen, were ploughed out and to a great extent demolished by 

 the later sheet of ice. The shreds that remain, however, are of ex- 

 treme interest, from the fact that they contain relics of the Pleis- 

 tocene mammals, with which Palaeolithic man was contemporaneous ; 

 and there is a bare chance that some day traces of man himself 

 may be encountered in the same deposits. 



Geologists have shown that in the regions which were overflowed 

 by the second or minor ice sheet no traces of Palaeolithic man, or of 

 the southern mammals with which he was associated, have ever been 

 met with in British superficial alluvia. When found in those regions 

 out of Scotland, they occurred in caves chiefly, and sometimes in the 

 stratified deposits which here and there underlie the upjDer bouldei- 

 clay and its accompanying gravels. 



So far as Scotland is concerned, one must look for a period subse>- 

 quent to the melting of the second great ice sheet for evidence of the 

 existence of early man. After its disappearance important fluctuations 

 in temperature and in the relative level of land and sea took place 

 from time to time, so that the climate and the area of land in Scotland 

 diifered in some measure from what is known at the present day. 

 Eventually a period of cold again occurred, not so severe, undoubtedly, 

 as in the two preceding glacial epochs, but sufficient to bring into 



