342 FOSSIL MEN. 



have long contended. A short paper, by Feilden, in the Pro- 

 ceedings of the Royal Dublin Society, reduces the solution f 

 of these questions, and also the theory of interglacial periods, I 

 into a nutshell, by directing attention to the comparatively ; 

 temperate climate of Grinnel Land in N. latitude 81 40' to 

 83 6' with the glaciation of Greenland " in the same parallel s 

 of latitude, and on the opposite shore of a channel only twenty ^ 

 miles across." In a paper in the Quarterly Journal of the 

 Geological Society, November, 1879, Professor Boyd Dawkins 

 details some interesting new explorations in Creswell caves. 

 Two deposits by water seem to have taken place in the caves 

 explored before the appearance of man, and two others subse- 

 quently. First, a bed of white calcareous sand without fossils. 

 Second, beds of red clay and ferruginous sand containing bones 

 of extinct Pleistocene mammalia, but no remains of man. 

 Third, a bed of red sand with bones of the mammoth, woolly 

 rhinoceros, horse and reindeer, and rude quartzite imple- 

 ments, with a hatchet of ironstone and " pot-boilers." Fourth, 

 breccia and upper cave-earth, with human bones and better 

 formed implements of flint and carved bone objects. The 

 animal remains were a mixture of recent and extinct species ; 

 but the bed had been much disturbed. The two beds, num- 

 bers 3 and 4, must have been formed under different circum- 

 stances, and probably at some distance of time apart. Both 

 are Post-glacial, but there seems every reason to believe that 

 the one represents the Palaeocosmic, and the other the earlier Id 

 Neocosmic age. There is no reason to suppose that the imple- 

 ments in either represent the best work of their time ; but if 

 the pot-boilers of the oldest deposit are genuine they must 

 represent savages of somewhat advanced type, and with 

 vessels for cooking, 



Skertchley, in a recent paper, calculates the age of the allu- 

 vial deposits of the "Wash," and the bordering peats, and, 

 measuring by the deposits of the Roman period, assigns to 

 peats holding " Neolithic " implements an age of 7000 years. 

 But there is no real distinction between Neolithic and Palaao- 

 lithic, and there is no reason to believe that the deposit of 

 either silt or peat has been as rapid since Roman times as 



