TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION C. 423. 



for llie thin-skulled men taken by Dr. Keith » and others to prove that modern 

 types of men lived in Britain in the Pleistocene age. 



Man appears in Britain and on the Continent at the period when he might 

 be expected to appear, from the study of the evolution of the Tertiary 

 Mammalia — at the beginning of the Pleistocene age when the existing Eutherian 

 mammalian species were abundant. He may be looked for in the Pliocene 

 when the existing species were few. In the older strata — Miocene, Oligocene, 

 Eocene — he can only be represented by an ancestry of intermediate forms. 



THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 9. 



Johil Discussion ivilh Section E on The Classification of Land Forms. 



(See Section E, p. 490.) 



The following Papers and Report were then read :^ 



1. Notes on the North-I^'estern Region of Charnwood Forest. 

 By Rev. Professor T. G. Bonney, Sc.D., F.R.S. 



The author, in a joint paper with Canon Hill, published in 1891, expressed 

 his opinion that the Peldar and the Sharpley porphyroids were probably lava 

 flows, and the dominant rock of Bardon Hill was a volcanic agglomerate. Since 

 that date Charnwood Forest has been examined by the Geological Survey, and 

 the Peldar porphyroid regarded as intrusive in pyroclastic rocks at Bardon 

 Hill.' During the present year the author has twice visited the district, having 

 heard how greatly quarrying had progressed, and having become doubtful, 

 from repeated study of his microscopic specimens, about his former conclusions. 

 He had the advantage of being accompanied on one occasion by Canon Hill, 

 on the other by Mr. R. H. Rastall. The additional evidence has changed his 

 view on certain points. He is now convinced that the dominant Bardon breccia 

 (which cannot be separated from the rock similar to its matrix, but without 

 fragments) is really a very exceptional case of a fluxion breccia. In this the 

 microscopic structure of the fragments does not very much differ from that of 

 their matrix, and the latter varies but little from the ground-mass of the Peldar 

 and Sharpley porphyroids, though to the unaided eye these seem quite 

 distinct, or from the rock obtained in the Forest Rock quarry (now opened 

 to the west of that on Peldar Tor), though this sometimes shows more distinct 

 traces of fluxion and a pressure-structure even more marked than at Sharpley. 

 In all three quarries a more compact porphyroid is intrusive into the above- 

 named, and this, at Bardon Hill, is identical with the ordinary greenish rock 

 of that place. The latter can be seen sometimes to melt down the Peldar 

 porphyroid, and sometimes to make a sharp junction with it or even to enclose 

 actual fragments. 



The author recounted the field evidence and described the microscopic structure 

 of these rocks, which much resemble not only one another, but also some of the 

 fragments common in true agglomerates in that district. The earliest of the rocks 

 is a rather finely crystalline one, which occurs as fragments in the above-named 

 porphyroids ; these, which mu.st be very closely related and may be practically 

 of one age, are the next in succession ; lastly come the more compact porphy- 

 roids, which, at Bardon Hill, and probably also on Ratchett Hill, contain 

 fragments (.sometimes in considerable abundance), the latter being but little 

 older than their ground-mass, perhaps only earlier and very slightly differenti- 

 ated portions of the original magma, which had fallen to the temperature of 

 consolidation. 



'The skeletons of Galley Hill, in Kent, and that of Cheddar cave in 

 Somerset, have, in my opinion, been buried, and do not belong to the 

 Pleistocene age. 



