GEOLOGY AND MINERALOGY. 239 



ductions, for that proof is independent of organic evidence or fossil 

 remains, and is based on physical data. As was stated to us last 

 year by Sir C' Lyell, we should still have to allow time for great 

 denudation of the chalk, and the removal from place to place, and 

 the spreading out over the length and breadth of a large valley of 

 heaps of chalk flints in beds from 10 to 15 feet in thickness, covered 

 by loams and sands of equal thickness, these last often tranquilly 

 deposited, all of which operations would require the supposition of a 

 great lapse of time. 



"That the mammalia Fauna, preserved under such circum- 

 stances, should be found to diverge from the tjqje now established in 

 the same region, is consistent with experience ; but the fact of a 

 foreign and extinct Fauna was not needed to indicate the great a^e 

 of the gravel containing the worked flints. 



" Another independent proof of the age of the same gravel and its 

 associated fossiliferous loam is derived from the large deposits of 

 peat above alluded to, in the Valley of the Somme, which contain 

 not only monuments of the Roman, but also those of an older stone 

 period, usually called Celtic. Bones, also, of the beai - , of the species 

 still inhabiting the Pyrenees, and of the beaver, and many large 

 stumps of trees, not yet well examined by botanists, are found in 

 the same peat, the oldest portion of which belongs to times far 

 beyond those of tradition ; yet distinguished geologists are of 

 opinion that the growth of all the vegetable matter, and even the 

 original scooping out of the hollows containing it, are events long 

 posterior in date to the gravel with flint implements, nay, posterior 

 even to the formation of the uppermost of the layers of loam with 

 freshwater shells overlaying the gravel. 



"The exploration of caverns, both in the British Isles and other 

 parts of Europe, has in the last few years been prosecuted with re- 

 newed ardour and success, although the theoretical explanation of 

 many of the phenomena brought to light seems as yet to baffle the 

 skill of the ablest geologists. Dr. Falconer has given us an account 

 of the remains of several hundred hippopotami, obtained from one 

 cavern, near Palermo, in a locality where there is now no running 

 water. The same palaeontologist, aided by Colonel Wood, of Gla- 

 morganshire, has recently extracted from a single cave in the Govver 

 peninsula of South Wales, a vast quantity of the antlers of a reindeer 

 (perhaps of two species of reindeer), both allied to the living one. 

 These fossils are most of them shed horns ; and there have been 

 already no less than 1100 of them dug out of the mud filling one 

 cave. 



" In the cave of Brixham, in Devonshire, and in another near 

 Palermo, in Sicily, flint implements were observed by Dr. Falconer, 

 associated in such a manner with the bones of extinct mammalia, as 

 to lead him to infer that man must have co-existed with several lost 

 species of quadrupeds ; and M. de Yibrayehas also this spring called 

 attention to analogous conclusions, at which he has arrived by 

 studying the position of a human jaw with teeth, accompanied by 

 the remains of a mammoth, under the stalagmite of the Grotto 

 d'Arcis, near Troyes, in France." 



