16 Prof, Hughes, On the Evidence for Pre-glacial Man. [Nov. 20', 



where it was shewn that five days were not sufficient to allow the 

 heat, arising from the action of the boring tool, to be dissipated. 



Although then the boring at Speremberg appears to have 

 offered in some respects unusual advantages, both on account of 

 its enormous depth and from the remarkable homogeneousness of 

 the strata (283 feet being in gypsum and the remainder in pure 

 rock-salt); nevertheless there are grounds for doubting whether 

 the temperatures obtained at that place afford so good direct 

 indications of the law of increase of temperature in the earth's 

 crust, as those which have been made in smaller perforations, 

 where the currents have been more opposed by the friction of the 

 sides. At any rate there seems no reason to assent to Prof. Mohr's 

 conclusion, that the observations in this boring prove that the 

 cause of the heat of the crust of the earth must be sought within 

 the crust itself. 



(2) Prof. Hughes, On the Evidence for Pre-glacial Man. 



After having briefly reviewed some of the older evidence on 

 which man had been referred to Pliocene, or even Miocene times, 

 in all those cases in which he had an opportunity of examining 

 the locality and circumstances of the discovery, he said that he 

 had been satisfied that there Avas no foundation for the inference, 

 and in the others he pointed out sources of error in the observa- 

 tions and various suspicious circumstances which seemed to him 

 to warrant the rejection of the evidence as yet adduced. 



He criticised more at length the evidence brought forward by 

 Mr Tiddeman from the Victoria Cave — where, however, he allowed 

 the best case had been made out, and where he thought more 

 evidence might be obtained. He believed, however, that the 

 boulder clay which overlapped the cave earth, in which a human 

 fibula had been found, had fallen rather sideways over the pre- 

 existing talus from a pipe of boulder-clay similar to many others 

 which occur over the hill above the cave. The boulder- clay last 

 found on the floor of rock at the mouth of the cave did not over- 

 lap the cave-earth and so need not be further referred to. The 

 laminated clay he considered to be due to the sediment from 

 ordinary flood-water after rains, and to be still in process of forma- 

 tion in similar caves. The clay in the talus on the inside of the 

 boulder-clay he thought was only the mud which had been washed 

 in between the stones when the water was ponded back in the 

 cave by the bank of boulder-clay at the mouth. 



In the cases adduced by Mr Skertchley from the loams of 

 Norfolk and Suffolk he thought that not only was there no suffi- 

 cient evidence to prove that remains of man had been found in 

 glacial beds, but, on the contra,ry, that there was abundant evi- 



