CHAP, vi.] RIVER-DRIFT MAN AND GLACIAL PHENOMENA. 169 



mediate form connecting the human race with the lower 

 animals. 



Relation of River-drift Man to the Glacial Phenomena. 



The Palaeolithic hunter of the mid and late Pleis- 

 tocene river -deposits in Europe belongs, as we have 

 already shown, to a fauna which arrived in Britain 

 before the lowering of the temperature produced glaciers 

 and icebergs in our country ; he may therefore be viewed 

 as being probably pre -glacial. When the temperature 

 was lowest he probably retreated southwards, and 

 returned northwards as it grew warmer, precisely in 

 the same manner as the mammalia on which he de- 

 pended for food. From these a priori considerations, 

 he may also be viewed as interglacial ; but it must be 

 remarked that the proof of this, brought forward by Mr. 

 Skertchly 1 from his discoveries at Brandon and else- 

 where in Norfolk and Suffolk, is still under discussion, 

 and that it is not established by any other discovery, 

 unless the lower brick-earths of Crayford and Erith be 

 considered pre- or inter-glacial. He was, however, in this 

 country after the retreat of the ice and the disappearance 

 of the icebergs from the area of south-eastern England, 



1 The Fenland, by H. S. Miller and S. B. J. Skertchly, 8vo, 1878, p. 

 546 ; also S. B. J. Skertchly, Mem. of Geol. Survey of Great Britain. The 

 strata containing the implements are considered by Professors Hughes and 

 Bonney not to be of clearly ascertained inter- or pre-glacial age. Mr. 

 Skertchly's conclusions are accepted by Professor Ramsay and Mr. Whit- 

 aker, and put by the prudent caution of Mr. Evans " to a suspense 

 account." I feel inclined to accept the evidence brought before the British 

 Association at Sheffield in 1879, founded on the sections at High Lodge, 

 Culford, Milderihall, West Stow, and Broomhill, in favour of man having 

 lived in East Anglia before the upper boulder clay had ceased to be 

 deposited. 



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