N.4 rURE 



309 



THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 1881 



PREHISTORIC EUROPE 

 Prerdstoric Eurofii'. A Geological Sketch. By James 



Geikie, LL.D., F.R.S. Svo. (London: Stanford, 



1881.) 

 Les Premiers Hommcs el les Temps Prehisioiiqnes. Par 



le Marquis de Nadaillac. Two vols. Svo. (Paris : 



iNIasson, 1881.) 



THE condition of Europe outside the reach of history 

 and the changes by which it has come to be what 

 it is, the appearance of man and his progress in culture, 

 combine to form a subject which cannot, in our opinion, 

 be treated satisfactorily in the present state of t;nowledge. 

 New facts are being daily brought to light, the specula- 

 tions of yesterday are being tested by the discoveries of 

 to-day, and the accumulation of materials necessary to 

 form a sound judgment even in any one department, such, 

 for instance, as archaeology, is so great, that it may well 

 daunt the courage of the boldest writer who knows the 

 nature of the task before him. In the two books before 

 us the subject is treated from totally different points of 

 view. Dr. James Geikie takes his stand upon the glaci- 

 ated mountains of Scotland, and attempts to throw the 

 glacial net woven in his previous work, " The Ice Age," 

 over the whole of Europe, and the Marquis de Nadaillac 

 records the facts which he has collected from various 

 quarters, America included, in what may be called a pre- 

 historic gazetteer. The one avowedly takes up the posi- 

 tion of an advocate, and pushes glaciaUsm and inter- 

 glacialism to an extreme, while the other takes the safer, 

 though humbler, ground of a man who has no original 

 views to put forward. The works of both will be useful 

 exactly in proportion to the knowledge and judgment of 

 the reader. There is wheat in both works, but it needs 

 a careful winnowing, as we shall proceed to show. 



In his previous work Dr. James Geikie proposed a 

 classification of the Pleistocene deposits of Europe based 

 mainly on observations which he has made in certain 

 parts of Scotland, and attempted a more minute sub- 

 division of the glacial strata than the threefold arrangement 

 generally recognised by European geologists. He advo- 

 cated a complicated series of arctic glacial and of warm in- 

 terglacial periods, layers of clay with boulders representing 

 the one, and strata of sand, gravel, loam, or peat the other. 

 His views are by no means accepted, even for Scotland, 

 and the small progress made in general classification 

 during the last twenty years may be estimated from the 

 fact, that scarcely any two geologists agree in correlating 

 the clays and sands on the east and west side of the 

 Pennine Chain with one another and with the glacial 

 strata of Wales, Cumbria, or Scotland. There also is a 

 considerable difference of opinion as to the clays them- 

 selves having been derived from glaciers or from icebergs. 

 In his present work he treats these difficulties as solved, 

 and devotes one large section to show "English geo- 

 logists" (why English.'') that all the fluviatile and cave- 

 accumulations with Palseolithic man and the Pleistocene 

 mammaha usually termed Post-glacial, are "of Inter- 

 glacial, and not of Post-glacial date." The latter term is 

 here used in the sense of being " later than the last great 

 Vol. XXIII. — No. 588 



extension of glacier ice in Europe," while the former 

 represents the interval of time between the retreat of one 

 set of glaciers and the advance of another, or that between 

 the deposits of one set of icebergs and those of another. 

 Lyell, Prestwioh, Evans, Hughes, and the great majority 

 of those who have worked at the subject hold that the 

 Pleistocene mammalia invaded Europe before the glacial 

 cold had set in, and swung to and fro according to the 

 fluctuations of temperature while the glaciers were 

 advancing and retreating, and that there is proof that 

 Pateolithic man and the extinct animals were in Britain 

 "after the last great extension of the glaciers" (if they 

 were glaciers and not icebergs). We will then appeal to 

 the facts which have been repeatedly urged in the Pro- 

 ceedings of the Geological Society and of the Anthropo- 

 logical Institute, as well as in most of the separate 

 works published in Britain since the year i860. 



The area over which Pateolithic implements and 

 Pleistocene mammalia occur in direct relation to the 

 glacial deposits is principally the valley of the Thames 

 and of the Severn, and the Midland and Eastern 

 counties. In the first of these they occur in fluviatile 

 strata, such, for example, as the gravels on which 

 London stands, which are composed of materials derived 

 from the destruction of "the chalky boulder clay.'' In 

 the valley of the Severn the Pleistocene mammalia are 

 imbedded also in the detritus of the boulder clay of that 

 region (Lucy). In the neighbourhood of Cambridge 

 (Hughes, Fisher) the same is the case. In the neighbour- 

 hood of Bedford, Wyatt, Prestwich, and Lyell pointed out 

 long ago, not only that the gravels containing the flint 

 implements and fossil mammals were composed of 

 materials that resulted from the wreck of the boulder 

 clay, but that the deposit rested in a hollow which had 

 been cut through " the great chalky boulder clay " of the 

 district. .A.t Hoxne the mammaliferous gravels with 

 Palaeolithic implements rest on that boulder clay. The 

 clays in question are the only signs of the extension of 

 glaciers (." icebergs) over those districts, and the fluviatile 

 deposits are obviously of later date. This conclusion Dr. 

 James Geikie does not venture to dispute, but he asks us 

 to believe that formerly another sheet of boulder clay has 

 covered up all these deposits, and that it has been removed 

 so completely that no trace of it is now to be seen. He 

 fixes his attention on the purple clay and the Hessle clay, 

 which occupy an exceedingly limited area, in Yorkshire 

 and Lincolnshire, and imagines that they represent 

 glacial periods, one of which, not specified, extended over 

 the fluviatile strata in question, and caused these strata to 

 be inter- instead of post-glacial. These boulder clays are 

 local and unimportant, and have not been met with over 

 any deposit containing Palasolithic implements. In ad- 

 vancing this speculation he is drawing a cheque on our 

 credulity which is not likely to be honoured. The strata 

 in question are proved by their position to be later than 

 the glacial deposits of the districts in which they occur ; 

 it is for him to prove that they are earlier than glacial 

 deposits elsewhere. This he has not done. Still less can 

 his conclusion be accepted that Palaeolithic man and the 

 Pleistocene beasts associated with him are solely " inter- 

 glacial " in Britain and on the Continent in non-glaciated 

 areas. The cases quoted above, and they might be greatly 

 increased, prove that man and the Pleistocene beasts were 



