562 REPOiiT— 1889, 



stages of the Glacial period. This has been proved again and again, not only for 

 this country but for Europe generally. I am sorry to reflect that some twenty 

 years have now elapsed since I was led to suspect that the paleolithic gravels and 

 cave-deposits were not of postglacial but of glacial and interglacial age. In 1871-72 

 I wrote a series of papers for the ' Geological Magazine ' in which were set forth the 

 views I had come to form upon this interesting question. In these papers it was 

 maintained that the alluvia and cave-deposits could not be of postglacial age, but 

 must be assigned to preglacial and interglacial times, and in chief measure to the 

 latter. Evidence was led to show that the latest great development of glacier-ice 

 in Europe took place after the southern pachyderms and palaeolithic man had 

 vacated England — that during this last stage of the Glacial period man lived con- 

 temporaneously with a northern and alpine fauna in such regions as Southern 

 France — and, lastly, that palaeolithic man and the southern mammalia never 

 revisited North-Westem Europe after extreme glacial conditions had disappeared. 

 These conclusions were arrived at after a somewhat detailed examination of all the 

 evidence then available — the remarkable distribution of the palaeolithic and ossi- 

 ferous alluvia having, as I have said, particularly impressed me. I coloured a 

 map to show at once the areas covered by the glacial and fluvio-glacial deposits of 

 the last glacial epoch, and the regions in which the implement-bearing and ossi- 

 ferous alluvia had been met with, when it became apparent that the latter never 

 occurred at the surface within the regions occupied by the former. If ossiferous 

 alluvia did here and there appear within the recently glaciated areas it was always 

 either in caves, or as infra- or interglacial deposits. Since the date of these 

 researches our knowledge of the geographical distribution of Pleistocene deposits 

 has greatly increased, and implements and other relics of palaeolithic man have 

 been recorded from many new localities throughout Europe. But none of this 

 fresh evidence contradicts the conclusions I had previously arrived at; on the 

 contrary, it has greatly strengthened my general argument. 



Professor Penck was, I think, the first on the Continent to adopt the views re- 

 ferred to. He was among the earliest to recognise the evidence of interglacial con- 

 ditions in the drift-covered regions of Northern Germany, and it was the reflections 

 which those remarkable interglacial beds were so well calculated to suggest that 

 led him into the same path as myself. Dr. Penck has published a map ' showing 

 the areas covered by the earlier and later glacial deposits in Northern Europe and 

 the Alpine lands, and indicating at the same time the various localities where 

 palaeolithic finds have occurred. And in not a single case do any of the latter 

 appear within the areas covered by the accumulations of the last glacial epoch. 



A glance at the papers which have been published in Germany within the last 

 few years will show how greatly students of the Pleistocene ossiferous beds have 

 been influenced by what is now known of the interglacial deposits and their organic 

 remains. Professors Rothpletz * and Andrese,^ Dr. Pohlig, * and others do not now 

 hesitate to correlate with those beds the old ossiferous and implement-bearing 

 alluvia which lie altogether outside of glaciated regions. 



The relation of the Pleistocene alluvia of France to the glacial deposits of that 

 and other countries has been especially canvassed. Rothpletz, in the paper cited 

 below, includes these alluvia amongst the interglacial deposits ; and in the present 

 year we have an interesting essay on the same subject by the accomplished secretary 

 of the Anthropological and Archaeological Congress, which met last month in Paris. 

 M. Boule correlates'* the paleolithic cave- and river-deposits of France with those of 

 other countries, and shows that they must be of interglacial age. His classification, 

 I am gratified to find, does not materially differ from that given by myself a num- 

 ber of years ago. He is satisfied that in France there is evidence of three glacial 

 epochs and two well-marked interglacial horizons. The oldest of the palaeolithic 



' Archivfur AntTiropolocjie, Bd. xv., Heft 3, 1884. 



- Rothpletz: Benhschrift d. scJin-ekcr. G est. fur d.gesammt. Nat., Bd. xxviii., 1881. 



^ AndrcEe : Ahhandl. z. gcolog. Specialltarte r. Elsass-Lothringen, Bd. iv., Heft 2, 



* Pohlig : op. cit. 



° Boule : Sevue d'Antkro2fologic, 1889, t. i. 



