Jniic 2 1, 1877] 



NATURE 



141. 



ment, and that governors will seek to redeem these institutions 

 froru the mere curiosity shop style into which too many have 

 developed, and to render them valuable educational instruments. 



Interested in geology, I have been pleased, in occasional visits 

 with pupils to our local museums, to note the gain to accurate 

 knowledge as the diagrammatic illustration of the text-book is 

 exchanged for the fuller teaching of fossil and specimen, and 

 where, to chronological and stratigraphical plan, the character- 

 istic fossils are indicated by special labels, and the time range 

 shown by variously coloured mounts, the advantage is consider- 

 able. I would further suggest the desirability of numbering im- 

 portant objects, as iH a picture gallery, and furnishing the visitor 

 with an attractive catalogue. Where several museums exist in 

 the same town could not the authorities, by mutual agreement, 

 economise space and effort by division of labour, each one be- 

 coming to some extent exhaustive in a special direction? 



In one of our best arranged museums I recently found, for 

 pure want of room, Cambrian trilobites associated with basic 

 rocks, and a fossil neatly stowed away in a case of Vesuvian 

 products. 



Bright, convenient, and well-keyed, our museums ought to 

 increasingly attract students and gather in recruits from time to 

 time fiom the inquiring public. A good supply should in this, 

 as in some other educational difRculties, create demand, and 

 stimulate public sentiment until our museums become so com- 

 modious and well-appointed as to bear comparison with the 

 excellent models Prof. Dawkins re'ers to as established by our 

 Continental neighbours ; and the natural sciences gain in digr.ity 

 amongst us until they enier into healthy rivalry with the elder 

 and established studies of numbers and letters. 



Manchester, June 2 William Gee 



I SEE with pleasure that Prof. Boyd Dawkins has again 

 raised his voice urging tlie importance of museums as a means of 

 education, but as there is one point regarding their management 

 to which it may be useful to call attention, I shall be glad if you 

 will allow me to do so through your pages. 



Undoubtedly English museums compare most unfavourably 

 with foreign ones, and this partly arises from the idea which is 

 so prevalent that one man ought to be able to arrange and deter- 

 mine anything from New Zealand birds, plants, or fossils to a 

 collection of Egyptian idols. The conse(|uence is that we see 

 such incongruities as were pointed out by Prof. Dawkins, to which 

 I should hke to add another, from one of the leading technical 

 institutions of London ; there a few years ago (and I suppose 

 there are still), among buildmg materials, some large Nummulites 

 (a genus of fossil foraminifera), marked portions of brick made 

 by the Israelites for the Egyptians when they were allowed no 

 straw. 



In a middle-sized foreign town in any of the other civilised 

 countries of Europe there is a museum in charge of men who 

 have given their attention to various branches of science ; even 

 in Italy, which is much behind in this matter of museums, we 

 find in such towns as Turin a w'ell-arranged museum with a con- 

 siderable .staff of curators, with the minerals in the hands of one 

 man, the fossils in another, the vertebrates have, I believe, two or 

 three of the staff to work at them, while the invertebrates are in 

 the hands of another, and in the sime way the historical and 

 technical portions are no doubt under adequate management. 



When we turn back to England we find such a humiliating 

 thing as a town like Manchester with no museum worthy of a 

 fourth-rate town. 



It will no doubt be some time before their importance is fully 

 recognised and therefore as museums are likely to be for a long 

 lime insufficiently manned, might it not be a great advantage if 

 a number of local museums joined together to employ specialists 

 to determine different gioups? Such work might no doubt be 

 done very cheaply, for such men would often be glad of the 

 opportunity of so much material passing through their hands, 

 (i A naturalist who was making any group, such as corals or 

 Crustacea, his subject, might visit the museums and would in a 

 very short time be able to determine and a;range the greater 

 part of the local collection, and might have those which required 

 lurther research sent up to London for investigation at leisure 

 upon the completion of his tour. Arthur Wm. Waters 



Alderley Edge 



The Antiquity of Man 



Having carefully perused the proceedings that took place at 



the recent "Conference" on the subject of the antiquity of 



man at the Anthropological Institute, I confess to a feeling of 

 disappointment. I had looked, if not for new geological facts, 

 at least for something novel in the treatment of what was already 

 known, instead of which the geological speakers seem, for the 

 most part, to have merely reiterated opinions with which their 

 names have been for some time identified. Thus my able 

 opponent. Prof. Boyd Dawkins, does no more than restate views 

 and conclusions which have already been controverted more 

 than once, and to which, therefore, I need not reply here, as in 

 so doing I should be only summarising what has been stated at 

 length elsewhere. Mr. Dawkins's "case" and my own are 

 now so fully before our fellow-hammerers that we may be well 

 content to leave them for judgment to the future — a future which 

 is probably not far off. Prof. Prestwich, again, while quite open 

 to conviction that man may have lived in England in pre-glacial 

 times, is yet strongly of opinion that all the human relics hitherto 

 obtained in the south of England are oi post-glacial a.ge, because 

 they occur in deposits that overlie "the boulder-clay." Now 

 this conclusion would certainly follow if it could be shown 

 that the " chalky boulder-clay " of East Anglia represents, as 

 Prof. Prestwich thinks it does, the glacial period. Unfortu- 

 nately it only represents one phase of that period. There is an 

 olJir boulder-clay than that "chalky till," and there are two 

 separate boulder-clays which are younger, as Mr. S. V. Wojd 

 has demonstrated. The East Anglim chalky boulder-clay was 

 laid down, as I believe, during the climax of glacial cold, and is 

 consequently much older than the upper boulder-clays that occupy 

 the surface of Scotland and the North of England. For the evi- 

 dence which has weighed with me in coming to this conclusion 

 I must refer Prof. Prestwich to the account of the English glacial 

 deposits, which is given in the second edition of my work on the 

 Ice Age. The proofs and argument are too long to recapitu- 

 late here. That the East Anglian chalky till belongs to a much 

 more ancient date than the upper boulder clays of Yorkshire and 

 the North, must strike any one who will take the trouble to com- 

 pare them. The East Anglian deposit has been subjected to 

 long-continued and powerful erosion, and everywhere bears the 

 impress of extreme antiquity, while the younger tills of the North 

 have a comparatively recent appearance. Nor is this by any 

 means all, for between the accumulation of the chalky till and 

 the formation of the most recent boulder-clay or till of the North 

 there certainly intervened one mild inter-glacial period. (There 

 were in reality, as I behove, two such periods, ) Now during 

 the " last inter-glacial period " — that, namely, which preceded 

 ihe deposition of the youngest boulder-clay of Yorkshire and the 

 North — there certainly existed a land-surface in England over 

 which the pleistocene mammalia roamed. The proofs of this 

 arc found in certain fresh-water and estuatine deposits which are 

 met with near Hull and elsewhere, and which have yielded 

 mammalian remains, and thousands of Cyniia Jlii/ninalis axii. 

 other shells. Prof. Prestwich has himself described these beds 

 and classified them as pMl-j^lmial, partly because they repose 

 upon boulder-clay and partly on account of their fossil contents. 

 But since the date of Prof. Prestwich's visit to the locality in 

 question, the section (near Burstwick) has been much better 

 opened up, and now one may see resting upon tjiese so-called 

 post-;^lacial deposits a thick mass of tumultuous boulder-clay. This 

 boulder-clay is in my opinion as truly the product of glacier-ice 

 as any ground-moraine or till in Scotlatd, Norway, or Switzer- 

 land, and points to a time when all Scotland and the northern 

 districts of England, down as far as the valley of the Humber, 

 were shrouded in snow and ice. 



With reference to the recent discoveries by Mr. Skertchly 

 near Brandon, which Mr. Evans and Prof. Hughes have con- 

 vinced themselves lend no support to the view that man is other 

 than post-glacial, I would ask geologists to suspend their judg- 

 ment until they have had an opportunity of hearing the other side. 

 Let them exercise a Utile of that " caution " which Mr. Evans 

 desiderates, and not too readily acquiesce in his and Prof. 

 Hughes' ruling. Mr. Skertchly, who has mapped the ground 

 about Brandon and Thetford, and whom we may suppose, there- 

 fore, to be more intimately acquainted with the geology of that 

 district than either of his opponents, has no doubt that certain 

 implement-bearing brick-earths are covered by boulder-clay in 

 situ. I have also carefully examined the sections in question 

 and feel quite sure that Mr. Skertchly is right, and that the 

 overlying accumulation is a true glacial deposit, and an integral 

 portioir of the so-called chalky boulder-clay. Prof. Ramsay, 

 who has Ukewise recently visited Brandon, is, I believe, of the 

 same opinion. But the occurrence of flint implements under- 

 neath the chalky till of East Anglia is, after all, no proof that 



