300 THE KEY. J. MAGENS MELLO^ M.A., F.G.S., ETC., ON 



seems to me) a sufficient cause for the cliaiige of race in the greafe 

 deprecsion of the land areas of Northern and Western Europe 

 ■which intervened between these two epoclis. This dejoression 

 amounts in some parts of the British Islands to 1,300 feefc 

 below ilie present sea-level, but in the south of England and the 

 adjoining parts of the continent it amounted to several hundred 

 feet. In Scotland the depression was over 510 feet, and in 

 Norway it reached about 600 feet. The British Isles were 

 converted into an archipelago of islets, and large tracts of the 

 continental low ground must have been submerged a the period 

 when the high-level gravels of the valley of the River Somme were 

 being deposited. Attempts have recently been made to minimise, 

 or even t,o deny, the great extent of the interglacial submergence, 

 but as it seems to me with very little success. The evidence is too 

 overv?helming — consisting of the presence of stratified shelly 

 gravels at various levels above the sea. A general depression 

 Avhich cJiused a large tract of Northern and Western Europe and 

 the British Isles to be converted into sea for a prolonged period 

 may well have caused the breaking up and dispersion of the 

 Palteolithic tribes — and their final extinction or absorption by the 

 moi^e civilized Neolithic races, which as the land ros9 from beneath 

 the sea-bed spread themselves from the far east — and introduced a 

 higher state of culture than that prevalent amongst the early 

 race.* 



Mr. J. PosTLETHWAiTE, F.G.S., Writes : — 



I have read Mr. Mello's paper with much pleasure and profit. 

 Hei"e, in our lake country, we have evidences of the presence 

 of both Palaeolithic and Neolithic Man. Of the former, in the 

 shape of rudely chipped stone weapons and implements, and of the 

 latter, in weapons and implements elegantly formed and beautifully 

 polished ; also houses, forts, places of sej^ulture and places of 

 worship. A small collection of both rude and polished weapons 

 and implements may be seen in the Keswick Museum of Local 

 Natural History, while others have found a home in private 

 collections. These weapons and implements have not been 

 manufactured from flint, but from the compact lavas of the 

 volcanic series of Borrowdale, showing that the ancient artificers 



* In my Physical History of the British Isles, Plate XIV, Fig. 1, I have 

 endeavoured to represent the condition of the British Isles at the period 

 uf greatest submergence. 



