TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION D. — DEFT. ANTIIROrOLOGY. 601 



Nortliern Africa with Spain by way of Gibraltar, and with Italy by way of Malta 

 and Sicily.' 



In the course of time other living species followed, and the extinct species 

 became more rare. In the deposits, for instance, of the ancient Thames, at Ilford 

 and Grays Tburrock in Essex, and at Erith and Crayford in Kent, out of tM-enty- 

 six species, six only belong to extinct forms — the new-comers comprising the lionj 

 ■wild cat, spotted hyena, and otter, the bison, and the musk sheep. A flint flake 

 discovered by the Rev. Osmund Fisher, at Crayford, and a second discovered by 

 Messrs. ("headle and Woodward, at Erith, prove that man was present in the valley 

 of the Thames at this time ; while the more recent discoveries of Mr. Flaxman 

 Spurrell indicate the very spots where the palaeolithic hunter made his implements, 

 and prove that he used implements of the River-drift type, so widely distributed 

 over the surface of the earth. The arctic animals at this time were present, but 

 not in full force, in Southern Britain, and the innumerable reindeer which charac- 

 terise the later deposits of the Pleistocene age had not, so far an we know, taken 

 possession of the valley of the Thames. 



To what stage in the Pleistocene period are we to refer these traces of the 

 River-drift hunter? The only answer which I am able to give is that the associated 

 animals are intermediate between the Forest-bed group and that which characterises 

 the late Pleistocene division in the region extending from the Alps and the Pyre- 

 nees as far north as Yorkshire. Nor am I able to form an opinion about their 

 relation to the submergence of Middle or Northern Britain under the waves of the 

 glacial sea. They are quite as likely to be pre- as post- glacial. 



Thu Relation of the River-brift Hunter of the Late Pleistocene 

 TO THE Glacial Subiiergence. 



The rudely chipped implements of the River-drift hunter lie scattered through 

 the late Pleistocene river deposits in Southern and Eastern England in enormous 

 abundance, and as a rule in association with the remains of animals of arctic and of 

 warm habit, as well as some or other of the extinct species of remdeer and hippo- 

 potamus, along with mammoth and woolly rhinoceros. What is their relation to 

 the submergence of the land and the lowness of the temperature, which combined 

 together have resulted in the local phenomena known as glacial and interglacial ? 



The geographical change in Northern Europe at the close of the Forest-bed age 

 was very great. The forest of the North Sea sank beneath the waves, and Britain 

 was depressed to a depth of no less than 2,.300 feet in the "Welsh mountains, and 

 was reduced to an archipelago of islands, composed of what are now the higher 

 lands. The area of the English Channel also was depressed, and the ' silver streak ' 

 was somewhat wider than it is now, as is proved by the raised beach at Brighton, 

 at Bracklesham, and elsewhere, which marks the sea line of the largest island of 

 the archipelago, the southern island, as it may be termed, the northern shores of 

 which extended along a line passing from Bristol to London. The northern shore 

 of the Continent at this time extended eastwards from Abbeville north of the 

 Erzgebirge, through Saxony and Poland, into the middle of Russia, Scandinavia 

 being an island from which the glaciers descended into the sea. 



This geographical change was accompanied by a corresponding change in climate. 

 Glaciers descended from the higher mountains to the sea-level, and icebergs, melt- 

 ing as they passed southwards, deposited their burdens of clay, sand, and erratics, 

 which occupy such a wide area in the portions then submerged of Britain and the 

 Continent. 



This depression was followed by a re-elevation, by which the British isles again 

 formed part of the Continent, and all the large tract of country within the 100- 

 fathom line again became the feeding-grounds of the late Pleistocene Mammalia. 



An appeal to the animals associated Avith tlie River-drift implements will not 

 help us to fix the exact relation of man to these changes, because they were in 

 Britain before as well as after the submergence, and were living throughout in 

 those parts of Europe which were not submerged. It can only be done in areas 



' See Cave Hunting and Early Man. 



