24 Sir H. H. Howorth—The True Horizon of the Mammoth. 
basin du Rhone dans sa partie moyenne nous n’avons pas trouvé de 
traces de deux ou de plusieurs periodes glaciaires. . . . Nous avons 
été amené aussi 4 accepter qu’une seule période glaciaire d’une durée 
immense,” and after granting certain oscillations he continues :— 
“Nous repoussons comme peu vraisemblable la theorie des récur- 
rences de periodes glaciaires distinctes.”’ 
In regard to the Cavern of Chaleux on the Meuse, M. H. Dupont 
writes that the remains of man were deposited before the deposition 
of the yellow clay with angular blocks of limestone and the deposition 
of the Loess (Q.J.G.S. vol. xxiii. Translations and Notices, 3 and 4). 
If we turn to North Germany we have an area where the facts 
are, as Mr. Geikie says, very difficult to read, from the very mixed 
contents of the beds, from the absence of natural sections, and from 
the absence also of true Till or Boulder-clay. The great mass of 
the drift beds consists of sand, which is not always easy to dis- 
tinguish from the sands of the Brown Coal-formation. It is also 
very probable that in every case the Mammalian bones found in 
them are not rémanié. In regard to the shells, this is certainly so, 
for as Prof. Geikie says, they are not only much broken and abraided, 
but they are sometimes filled with a material entirely different from 
the matrix in which they are embedded, showing they are merely 
erratics, like the glaciated stones among which they occur. 
A test of the difficulty of correctly reaching these North German 
beds may be gathered from the fact that some distinguished geologists, 
notably the Commission appointed by the National Geological Insti- 
tute of Prussia, have quoted certain turf deposits in Lauenburg as 
evidence of an interglacial mild period. These beds were asserted by 
Keilback, in 1884 to be interstratified among glacial beds. They 
have recently been carefully examined by Credner, Gedinitz, and 
Waanschaffe, who have shown that the bed of turf in question is 
not intercalated as was supposed, but lies on the glacial beds. Move- 
ments of the soil and slippings have misled Keilback; for, where 
the section can be examined in tact, it shows a layer of marine sand 
containing a Cardium which previous observers have treated as of 
diluvian age, but which really belongs to the Miocene period, above 
which rests a calcareous sand, which is truly diluvian, and then the 
glacial marl. Above this rests the turf, containing lines of sand, 
above which there is no glacial bed whatever, and the turf with its 
sandy streaks everywhere overlies the glacial bed. The plants it 
contains are all still found in Lauenburg and the bed is really 
post-Glacial. 
Turning to Scandinavia, the evidence is very scanty indeed. I 
know of only one case which is germane to our discussion. Peat, 
with paleolithic implements, and bones of the cave bear, is described 
by Nillsson as underlying the Jira wall, a great ridge of sea-gravel 
extending along the coast of the Baltic from Ystad to the part 
between Trelleborg and Falsterbo. “If this ridge be an asar,” says 
Mr. Geikie, ‘as from the description may be inferred, and should it 
prove to belong to the great asar series, this would demonstrate 
that man had inhabited Sweden before the last great submergence 
