264 NATURAL SCIENCE [April 



the drift beds lie over or under the beds in which the Mammoth 

 occurs, and in which so-called palaeolithic man has left his traces ? 

 Upon this issue a great deal has been written which does not seem 

 to have penetrated official ears, nor, perhaps, the conservative 

 atmosphere of Burlington House. Now that the subject has 

 been made the special matter of an annual address from the 

 president of the Geological Society, perhaps it will receive a little 

 more attention. 



To some of us who have diligently collected and published the 

 evidence for many years past, and I myself have been allowed to 

 do so at great length in the Geological Magazine, thanks to the ever- 

 green benevolence of my old friend Dr Woodward, there remains 

 little or no doubt that in every case where the evidence is clear, 

 in the Old World, and probably in the New, the Drift beds plainly 

 and distinctly overlie the so-called Mammoth beds. This was the 

 view of Falconer and John Phillips. It is the view of Mr James 

 Geikie and Dr Hicks, with neither of whom do I agree on all 

 matters, but who on this one have done yeoman service in illus- 

 trating the question. We have not been content with mere 

 rhetoric ; we have shown in detail and by an immense concurrence 

 of facts that this is the case, and that when the facts appear to 

 lead to a different conclusion, the bones or other cUhris enclosed in 

 the drift are as much boulders in it as the marine shells have been 

 shown to be and as the travelled stones are. 



No attempt has been made to seriously answer the case thus 

 made out, but with the persistent monotony of that erratic bird 

 the cuckoo, we have had on the other side one echoed and re- 

 echoed assertion in the form of an oliter dictum. If there was 

 ever an instance in which the burden of proof was upon the other 

 side, it is this one. It is not surprising, therefore, if there has been 

 some resentment about it and some impatience, and if in my hear- 

 ing some phrases have been used about it, which had better be left 

 to the imagination. 



The views which have prevailed about the true position of the 

 Mammoth beds in regard to the Drift are virtually three. One view 

 has been that the Mammoth lived entirely after tlie distribution of 

 the Drift. This view is, I believe, extinct. The evidence is too 

 overwhelming that in numberless places the remains have been 

 found in undisturbed beds below the drift for this view to be any 

 longer tenable. A considerable number of people still maintain, 

 however, that the Mammoth both preceded and outlived the Drift 

 phenomena, having thus lived in two epochs, whence the name 

 Dicyclotherium given to the beast by Geoffrey St Hilaire. I have 

 tried with all tlie patience and care I could to examine the various 

 finds of Mammoth remains in the northern hemisphere where there 



