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of the Mendips, the date of which could be fixed almost to a 

 certainty, from the fact that all the beds above them have not 

 been affected thereby, and are laid down horizontally, which is 

 the case with all the secondary beds around Bath. Then at a 

 much later period came the second disturbance affecting each side 

 of the valley I have already indicated, and lastly, and it is this 

 which concerns us most, the excavations of the valleys themselves, 

 which must have occuri'ed when post-pliocene man lived here 

 with his now extinct contemporary mammals. He is a worthy we 

 all desire to become much better acquainted with ; and something 

 more will, I hope, another day be known of him. 



Anyone who walk across our oolitic table land with an eye to 

 geology, cannot I think fail to observe that they have been 

 subjected to much fluviatile action, the fissures in the rock itself 

 shew the continu.ous action of large bodies of water, which is 

 remarkably confirmed by the presence of derived material in them, 

 so that hundreds of feet above our present rivers there existed 

 others filling the valleys to at least the height of the highest 

 gravels. Climatic conditions alone appear equal to account for 

 these remarkable phenomena which however were not common 

 to our district alone. 



There were then as now varying degrees of temperature, and if 

 we had then in our district crept past the true glacial period there 

 might stUl be winter glaciation of our hills and valleys, or 

 enormous accumulations of snow drifts, which in their periodic 

 summer meltings would produce the same effects as glaciers. We 

 were then still part of the European continent, and Professor 

 Dawkins F.K.S., has suggested that the reindeer, the musk sheep 

 and other now northern forms of mammalia migrated each season 

 to suitable climes, leaving as we know enormous numbers of their 

 bones washed into our caverns and into our valley drifts. Every- 

 where around it may be seen that large bodies of water occupied 

 much higher elevations than they do at present, our comparatively 

 puny rivers and streams, and deposits of gravel along the higher 



