T. H. Strutters— Tertiary and Post-Tertiary. 399 



objected to ; for although there are now no glaciers in Britain, it 

 cannot be doubted that on the reelevation after the general submer- 

 gence of the ice-clad land at the close of the Newer Pliocene period, 

 glaciers existed in the mountainous districts of Europe, including the 

 British Islands, and had not entirely disappeared before the earliest 

 human inhabitants arrived. From that time to the present glacial 

 conditions bave continued in elevated regions of both hemispheres, 

 more especially in the circumpolar zones, whence myriads of 

 icebergs are annually sent off to drop their burden of clay and 

 boulders upon the bed of the ocean ; while in Southern Europe, and 

 even in lower latitudes, we have in the present day illustrations 

 of phenomena due to movements of land-ice. 



In human history the recognized median line between ancient and 

 modern is the birth of Christ, and the generally accepted geological 

 boundary between past and present is the advent of Man, an event 

 which marks the commencement of a new epoch of the world's 

 history, distinguished, in continuation of the ordinal classification of 

 strata, as Quaternary, and, as on zoological grounds, Neozoic (new 

 life) ; for certainly the presence of a rational being was something 

 new and unprecedented ; while at the same time the animal and 

 vegetable kingdoms of the period consist of new species directly 

 or indirectly adapted to the wants of the human race — cattle, and 

 smaller quadrupeds fit for food or domestication ; food fishes and 

 food fowls, edible fruit, grain-bearing grasses, and herbage. 



The term Post-tertiary is also employed to embrace the Neozoic 

 groups, the newer being commonly called Recent, and the older 

 Post-pliocene, terms for which we substitute Holocene and Pleisto- 

 cene respectively. Some authors would group both Tertiary and 

 Post-tertiary as Cainozoic — a designation under which the Tertiary 

 strata alone are at present embraced ; and which was originally 

 adopted by Sir Charles Lyell to indicate the presence, in their groups, 

 of mollusca specifically identical with those now living, their relative 

 prevalence, in certain localities, being shown by the terms Eocene 

 (a few recent); than Miocene (fewer), Pliocene (more) ; and its 

 Pleistocene (most). 



Adopting human life as the characteristic feature of the Post- 

 tertiary epoch, we accept Lyell's term " Newer Pliocene " as 

 descriptive of a Tertiary group embracing the lower, middle, and 

 upper stages of the Glacial period, to which we may be justified in 

 adding a fourth or drift stage ; for the close of the Tertiary epoch 

 appears to have been signalized by a widespread submergence of the 

 ice-clad land by which its glacial cover was floated off, and carried 

 away on ocean currents to drop its burden of clay and boulders at a 

 distance from their parent source. It is more than probable that 

 during the submergence not a few of the mountain summits of 

 Britain remained above sea-level as islets shrouded in snow and ice, 

 and beset with drifting floes which could not fail to imprint traces of 

 their existence upon the ancient coast-line. 



The record of the Newer Pliocene, or Glacial age, however, is 

 involved in considerable obscurity, from the circumstance that both 



