282 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [Vor. VIII. 
hyenas, mammoths, and reindeer were his congenitors, and by a careful 
estimation of the time necessary to deposit the lime covering over their 
remains, he concludes that they lived and died in these caves about 240,000 
years ago. That an icy cataclysm then took place, which either killed or 
drove them from their caves, that the earth or rather the northern part 
of Europe and the north-eastern part of the American continent, was then 
covered with a huge capping of ice, approximately 5,000 feet in depth for 
a long period, (Dr. Croll estimates from 10,000 to 12,000 years) towards 
the termination of this icy period, that there were numerous floods which 
built up, ‘‘the wide and deep masses of léss (brick earth) found in the 
valleys of the Rhine, Danube,’ and other rivers, in which remains of the 
Paleolithic man have also been found. Where these men lived in the 
meantime, we are not told, but eventually they all died, possibly several 
alternating glaciations took place, but eventually these long dreary al- 
ternating periods of ice and heat vanished. Then we find a new man, 
more highly civilized, called the Neolithic man, assume possession of 
the same cave dwellings, previously occupied by the then extinct Paleo- 
lithic man. So far so good, but how was the re-creation of this superior 
man accomplished, who was associated with the ox, sheep, dog and horse, 
and who used bronze instruments instead of stone? 
Dr. Croll’s arguments might be plausible, but for the undoubted fact 
that there have been considerable alterations of the earth’s surface, from 
the Pleistocene epoch, to the present time. Herodotus tells of a priest 
of Solon informing him of a tradition of the destruction of a large continent 
by submergence, situated on an island beyond the pillars of Hercules. 
We also know that during the whole long period covered by the Mesozoic 
and portions possibly of the Paleozoic and the Cainozoic, in fact almost 
up to the Quaternary, the major portions of the American continent were 
dry land and particularly the Laurentian. During this time Europe, 
and particularly Britain and Northern Europe, were largely submerged, 
probably caused either by a sudden cataclysm, or by the gradual subsi- 
dence of land and the rising of seas, which would necessitate consider- 
able changes of ocean currents, with resultant changes of climate. Thus 
even if we admitted Dr. Croll’s postulations, we would find a very serious 
stumbling-block in the Laurentian rocks in the north-eastern parts of 
this continent, where we should find considerable evidence of Rochés 
Nivelées such as are common in Greenland, resulting largely from the 
prior glaciation between 980,000 and 720,000 years ago, as well as the 
latter, but less severe glaciation, between 240,000 and 80,000 years ago, 
both of which have been postulated by Dr. Croll, but these evidences 
are entirely wanting. The best barometer to test the character of a 
climate, is the fauna and flora, which lived whilst it prevailed. Cold- 
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