H. H. Hoicorth—The Mammoth and the Glacial Drift. 251 



and interesting considerations worth discussing. Before we can 

 deal effectively with this problem, however, we must settle another 

 one equally important and equally interesting, to which I propose 

 to devote a few pages, namely, the precise geological horizon where 

 we are to put the Mammoth and his companions, including Palaso- 

 litliic man. 



It is at once a reproach to geology, and a good proof of the 

 very great difficulty there is in making our way among the latest 

 geological records, that there should be any doubt upon such a 

 question. The fact is nevertheless so, and has given rise to a sharp 

 polemic elsewhere in quite recent years. I am bound to say that 

 I myself have changed my views on the subject in view of the 

 evidence, and have to recant some phrases I once printed in this 

 Magazine. 



I wish to speak with some precision in the matter, and not to 

 be misunderstood. The point I would discuss is not whether the 

 Mammoth lived before, during, or after the so-called Glacial period, 

 but whether the beds in which his remains are found, when undis- 

 turbed, underlie or overlie the Drift, or are intercalated with it. 

 The two questions are not, as is often assumed, the same, and it is 

 to the latter alone that I wish my criticism to apply. 



I must also define the kind of evidence which I alone think con- 

 clusive. I altogether distrust any evidence on the point except that 

 of superposition. Evidence based upon inferences of different kinds I 

 have always mistrusted in deciding this critical question, but I would 

 go further. We must remember that the Till or Boulder-clay con- 

 tains extraneous bodies of different kinds, which are often far- 

 travelled, and sometimes not so. Among these bodies there may be 

 tree-trunks or molar teeth of Elephants, which may be as true 

 boulders as those of granite and gneiss and like them derived from 

 elsewhere. Whatever theory we adopt in regard to the Till, we 

 must concede that it picked up far-travelled debris in its march, 

 and mixed it in many cases with the debris of the underlying beds, 

 sometimes with Chalk, sometimes with Lias, sometimes with sand- 

 stone and mixed this debris with the fossils from these different 

 beds. It is further clear that ice would take up and convert 

 Mammoth teeth into boulders just as readily as Ammonites and 

 Belemnites, and that the former would be no more contemporary 

 with the Till nor evidence of an interglacial climate than the latter 

 are. Let us now turn to the evidence. 



The earliest discovery of Mammoth remains in Scotland took 

 place in the year 1817. "When," says Sir A. Geikie, "the Till 

 covering the sandstone at the quarry of Greenhill in the parish of 

 Kilmaurs, in Ayrshire, had been partially removed, there were 

 found at a depth of Vl\ feet from the surface, two Elephant's tusks. 

 . . . The matrix in which they were found was a clay, which around 

 the bones changed from its iisual light brown colour into a dark 

 brown, with a most offensive smell when turned over. The tusks 

 lay in a horizontal position with several bones near them. Dr. 

 Scouler visited the quarry about 1840, and reports that seven 



