700 EEPOET— 1881. 



TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 6. 



The following Papers were read and ExUbitions made : — 



1.- Traces of Man in the Crag. By H. Stopes, F.G.8. 



The prohahility of man having lived daring the Crag has heen suggested by 

 several (Charlesworth, &c.) 



Many deny it, nearly all doubt it. Their evidence is chiefly negative. This 

 shell, from the Crag at Walton-on-the-Naze, now gives a positive to the negative 

 evidence ; and although it need not necessarily at once create belief in man's 

 remote being, it ought not to be lightly cast on one side. It was foimd in the 

 Crag, properly stratified (and not in the talus), by a gentleman having good know- 

 ledge of geology, who would not be unable to judge, or know the value, of marking 

 well all the surroundings and exact position of the shell. Owing to a dislike of 

 the effects of the discovery, he did not publish it at the time, and a little while ago 

 gave the shell to me. The human face roughly cut upon it is of the rudest de- 

 scription, and is ve}y crude, thereby the more consistent. The shell is very abundant 

 at Walton. According to S. V. Wood, jun., the Walton Crag was deposited 

 under some depth of water ; not a beach as so much of the rest of the Red Crag. 

 Hence the possibility of the deposition of the shell without injury. It is bored 

 natm-ally (by a mollusc) ; the colour of the boring and of the markings agree. Any 

 shell now cut shows white, and does not readily take the same colour. Without 

 attaching undue importance to this solitary specimen of early art, the author's 

 object in giving it prominence is that, should any other evidence occur to substan- 

 tiate the belief in Crag Man's existence, the find may be known and tend to confirm 

 the struggling belief in man's extreme antiqiuty. 



o 



2. The Besults of recent further Excavations in the Caves of Cefn, near St. 

 Asaph, North Wales. By Professor T. McK. Hughes, M.A., and Mrs. 

 "Williams Wtnn. 



The authors pointed out the evidence of the direction of the ice movement from 

 the higher mountains of North Wales during the period of extreme glaciation, and 

 refeiTed to this period the transport, over the western watersheds into the Vale of 

 Clwyd, of the felsites and other associated rocks which were made use of in the- 

 manufacture of the implements found in the caves, which, therefore, must all be 

 post-glacial. 



Thej' next draw attention to the later or marine drifts of the Clwyd VaUey, 

 which are composed chiefly of the dehris of the older drift, generally with all the 

 clay washed out ; but contain also granites from the north, flints which cannot 

 have been derived from any part of Wales, and marine shells, of which only a few 

 are arctic forms. These deposits, they pointed out, were obviously later than the 

 true glacial drift. They then described the mode of occurrence in the caves of 

 marine shells, in drift somewhat similar in appearance to the marine drift of the 

 Vale of Clwyd ; but showed that, from its manner of accumulation and associated 

 angular dehris, it was obviously washed in from above along fissm'es, and was not 

 carried in during the period of submergence. As this drift was in and over the 

 main mass of fossihferous cave-earth, they inferred that all the yet known remains 

 in the Cefn caves must be not only later than the period of extension of Snow- 

 donian ice into that area, but must be subsequent to the submergence that marked 

 the close of the period of gi-eat glaciation, and were even proved to be later than 

 the emergence that brought the marine drifts up within reach of subaerial denuda- 

 tion. Specimens from the collection of Mrs. Williams Wyna were exhibited in. 

 illustration. 



