162 PLEISTOCENE DEPOSITS OF DERBYSHIRE. 
gravels, or clays, which principally, if not wholly, constitute this 
deposit, and the proneness of vegetable matter to decomposition. 
Nevertheless many have been discovered, some of which are 
arctic plants, while others belong to a temperate, or even torrid 
zone. The same deposits have contained Mollusca, which it is 
impossible could have existed side by side. In Tuscany they 
have yielded an arbor vite, allied to the common one in 
our gardens, and the walnut. Also the laurel of the Canary 
Islands, a variety of our common laurel. Saporta describes this 
plant as growing on the French shores of the Mediterranean, 
where the orange is cultivated in the open air; its favourite 
locality, however, is the Canary Islands, where it flourishes 
luxuriantly in the woody regions, with a northern exposure, 
between a height of 1,600 feet and 4,800 feet above the sea— 
regions which are nearly always enveloped in steaming vapours, 
and exposed to the heavy rains of winter. Commingled are a 
number of species of pine, some of which have sought refuge in 
the Pyrenees, and in the mountainous regions of Central Europe. 
Remains have also been found of the vine and fig tree. The 
climate must, therefore, have been more temperate and equable 
than it has been even this last winter. We have, indeed, the 
clearest evidence of a genial, humid, and equable temperature at 
this time. On the other hand, the Pleistocene deposits have 
yielded the Arctic Willow, such as are natives of Spitzbergen, 
and high Alpine mosses, which now range north to Lapland and 
Greenland. The results of the investigations of the Mollusca, 
by Tournouér, are exactly analogous to those of Count Saporta 
of the Flora. Such were the climatic alternations of the long 
periods during which these remains were deposited.* 
The first record we have in Derbyshire is in a cave in the 
Mountain Limestone, at 
BALLEYE, 
near Wirksworth, in 1663, when some bones and molar teeth of 
the elephant were found by a miner named George Mower, who 
* Geikie’s Prehistoric Europe, chap. iii. and iv. 
ee oo er. 
