Reviews — Dr. T. R. Holmes — Ancient Britain. 89 



"approach the E. frimigenius type of tooth, none are precisely like 

 any undoubted example of the species." ^ 



Glaciated remains of mammoth have, however, been found, and it is 

 not to be questioned that this animal existed in Britain prior to the 

 period of maximum glaciation. That man similarly existed there is 

 no reason to doubt, llemains of mammoth and other Pleistocene 

 mammals are abundant in the Dogger Bank and in the Thames Valley 

 gravels ; and when these remains were accumulated a large part of the 

 North Sea, as the author remarks, could not have existed, and there 

 was a ' land-bridge ' at any rate in that part of the Palaeolithic age. 



He does not attempt to connect this stage with that when the Straits 

 of Dover began to be cut by overflow ; and in a footnote referring to 

 Mr. Clement Reid's remarks on the re-extension of the old Rhine 

 estuary, he confesses he does not understand how to reconcile them. 

 There is, however, no necessary want of discord. 



That caves were occupied by man and by Pleistocene mammalia 

 before the climax of the Ice Age is now admitted from evidence 

 obtained not only in North Wales, but also, as regards mammalia, more 

 recently by Mr. Tiddeman in the Gower promontory. 



"With regard to Eoliths the author speaks with reserve, remarking 

 that "he who reflects that they have been met with not only in 

 Tertiary beds but in those immeasurably later deposits which were 

 contemporary with or but little older than Palaeolithic man will leave 

 them for the present without regret to the consideration of enthusiasts." 

 Nevertheless, among those noted to have accepted these rudely shaped 

 stones as artificial are Canon Greenwell, Pitt-Rivers, and Prestwich. 



A great deal has yet to be learned about the successive types of 

 Palaeolithic implements, a subject brought before our readers by 

 Mr. S. Hazzledine Warren (Geol. Mag., 1902, p. 97); and we may 

 add, much information is wanted also of the animal and other remains 

 associated with them. Thus the Hoxne implements, regarded as of 

 later date than the Chalky Boulder-clay, those of Caddington near 

 Dunstable, and those found at various levels in the deposits of the 

 Thames Valley, and elsewhere, have yet to be studied more particularly 

 in reference to the sequence of Pleistocene events. Eoliths as well as 

 palaeoliths have been derived and re-deposited. As the author remarks, 

 " the Palaeolithic age was of such vast duration that before its close 

 Britain may well have been invaded by new races " ; but he admits 

 that, despite some present difficulties, the French chronological 

 ■classification of de Mortillet may " contain a measure of truth." 



Comment is naturally made on the scanty evidence of human 

 remains in Pleistocene deposits. Of the famous Neanderthal man, 

 the author observes that the skull was capacious enough to lodge 

 a brain as large as that of many a living savage ; and trained observers 

 have pointed out that skulls of like contour have belonged in modern 

 times to men of considerable mental power." Quite recently Professor 

 Sollas has remarked that "the Neandertal and Pithecanthropus skulls 

 stand like the piers of a ruined bridge which once continuously 



1 "Yertebrata of the Pliocene Deposits of Britain": Mem. Geol. Survey, 

 1891, p. 47. 



