Jtily 1 8, 1872] 



NATURE 



225 



EVANS'S STONE IMPLEMENTS OF GREAT 



BRITAIN" 



II. 



ONE of the arguments usually relied upon in sup- 

 port of the belief in fluviatile, as opposed to 

 diluvial, agency in the formation of the deposits in 

 which the Stone Implements are found, is founded 

 on the assumption that the constituents of these qua- 

 ternary gravels are pctrologically such, and only such, 

 as belong to existing river basins ; and this fact, Mr. Evans 

 says, holds good in France and England, and cannot be 

 too often reiterated. Without pausing to consider how 

 far this argument might avail as against those who, like 

 Ur. Buckland, believe in a simultaneous and universal 

 cataclysm, it seems hardly applicable to the conditions 

 under which the implement-bearing drifts are found ; for 

 if the term petrological is to be understood as meaning 

 rocks found in situ in the river basins, and thus native to 

 the soil, then it is not the fact that the constituents of 

 the gravels in question belong to those basins ; for we 

 know that they are often largely made up — in one instance 

 cited by Mr. Evans to the extent of 50 per cent. — of the 

 quartzose stones known as Lickey pebbles, and rounded 

 fragments of jasper, quartz, and other foreign rocks. Such 

 rocks certainly do not belong petrologically, in the proper 

 sense of that term, to the river basins in which they 

 occur, but to strata of a far earlier date. As Dr. Buck- 

 land has shown, the quartzite pebbles are derived from 

 the New Red sandstone beds in Warwickshire and Leices- 

 tershire, and were at some remote period forced over the 

 escarpment of the Oolite into the south and east of Eng- 

 land. Whether they were brought in before or after the 

 present river valleys were formed is not very clear, nor 

 perhaps very material. It is incontestable that they were 

 transported from a great distance, and possibly by the 

 same forces that brought the flint gravels ; and it is 

 equally certain, in several instances, that their transport 

 cannot be attributed to rivers now in action, because those 

 rivers flow, as at Brandon, towards the quarter from 

 which the stones were brought. 



Nor, if it were certain that the intrusion of these rocks 

 dated back to the Glacial Epoch, as is usually supposed, 

 or to some other very distant period, and had thus be- 

 come denizens, if not natives of the soil, could the in- 

 ference which is drawn from the absence of extraneous 

 rocks be regarded as satisfactory. 



The occurrence of alternate elevations and depressions 

 of the land above or below the sea level, during the post- 

 glacial times, has been suggested by several English 

 writers ; and if we suppose that a district comprising the 

 south of England and the north of France, corresponding, 

 or nearly so, with that in which no boulder clay is found, 

 to be sufficiently depressed, and then invaded by a deluge, 

 the argument drawn from petrological conditions will 

 cease to apply ; for no rocks are found in the drift gravels 

 but such as belong to the supposed deluge basm. A 

 deluge of short duration would not necessarily introduce 

 any foreign rocks into the submerged area, but would 

 sweep into hollows and valleys those that came in its 

 way ; and even should the submergence be of long con- 

 tinuance, a; in some provinces of Holland, it would leave 

 no more tr;;jes than those exhibited in our drift gravels. 

 That such a partial deluge was both possible and probable 

 is evident when it is considered that a depression of 

 600 ft. would perfectly well effect it ; and as we have 

 evidence that the land has risen in several places 30 ft. 

 and more within the historical period, it is not difficult to 

 believe that in the infinitely longer time that probably 

 intervened after the Glacial Epoch the same process of 

 elevation may have been going on for many ages. 



* " The Ancient Stone Implements, Weapons, and Ornaments of Great 

 Brit.iin." By John Evans, KR.S., F.S.A. (London: Longmans and Co., 

 1872.) 



The absence of all traces of a marine fauna, and the oc- 

 casional presence of land and freshwater shells in these 

 beds, are circumstances on which much stress is laid by the 

 author ; but when fully considered they hardly seem to war- 

 rant the inferences drawn from them. A marine fauna 

 requires a marine flora for its sustenance, and unless the 

 submergence had been of long duration this could not 

 have existed. We find extensive marine deposits of older 

 date, in which no marine organisms are ever seen ; and if 

 marine fossils are wanting in drift beds, those of the land 

 and freshwater are usually equally wanting. We have, pro- 

 bably, hundreds of square miles of quaternary gravels, in 

 which not a single specimen has ever been discovered. 

 In those instances, comparatively rare, in which they 

 occur in the implement-bearing beds, they are usually 

 lying above the gravel, and may thus be ascribed to a 

 later date ; or if of an earlier date in some instances, their 

 occurrence would not of necessity exclude diluvial action, 

 as regards the gravels. 



There is one interesting topic connected with these 

 drifts, which Mr. Evans has not dealt with at any length, 

 as, indeed, it barely came within the design of his work ; 

 but he seems to share the general opinion that the men 

 who made and used the drift implements were contemporary 

 with the hippopotamus, elephant, rhinoceros, and other 

 animals, with whose remains they are often found associ- 

 ated. At present this is but a possibility, and it is 

 an assumption founded on the fact of the bones and im- 

 plements being often found in close proximity, but if, as 

 seems probable, the implements were formed from stones 

 found in the gravels in which they now rest, it can hardly 

 be doubted that the bones were already in that gravel, and 

 may have lain there for centuries. From their shattered 

 and way-worn condition, they have evidently been sub- 

 jected to much rougher usage than that which some of the 

 flint implements have met with. But however this may 

 have been, there can be no doubt, as Sir Charles Lyell has 

 observed in the "Antiquity of Man," that " the fabrication 

 of the implements must have preceded the reiterated de- 

 gradation which resulted in the formation of the overlying 

 beds ; " a process for which vast periods must be allowed, 

 and one which must have involved important geological 

 changes. Amongst others we have very strong reasons to 

 believe was the severance of our island from the Continent, 

 an event, indeed, which, however brought about, could 

 hardly have been unattended with important changes in 

 the contour of the adjacent districts, and the courses of 

 their rivers. When we contemplate the vast changes, geo- 

 logical, pakeontological, and geographical, which our race 

 seems to ha\e survived, we are surprised to learn how 

 very old we are, or, as Mr. Evans has better expressed it, 

 the mind is almost lost in amazement at the vista of an- 

 tiquity thus displayed. 



It would seem, as might be expected, that notwithstand- 

 ing the cosmopolitan character of these objects — for,as Mr. 

 Evans's researches have shown, they are found in one form 

 or other in every country on the face of the globe — cer- 

 tain forms are pretty well confined to certain localities, as 

 if each of the tribes or families who used them had its own 

 manufacture. The half-polished and polished celts of Nor- 

 folk, Suffolk, and Cambridgeshire vastly outnumber those 

 which have been observed in all other parts of England, 

 from which it would seem that these counties were more 

 popidous, or the people more advanced in the arts, than 

 in the rest of the island, or possibly they may have been 

 the manufacturing district of the period. As regards, 

 however, the distribution of the drift implements, a far 

 more suggestive and important circumstance is to be 

 noticed. As Mr. Evans has observed, the district farthest 

 north of the Thames in the gravels of which flint imple- 

 ments arc at the present time known to have been found, 

 is the basin of the River Ouse and its tributaries. They 

 have, in fact, been found at one time or other, in every 

 English county lying to the south-east of a line drawn from 



