Sir S, H. Soioorth — The Mammoth and the Glacial Drift. 397 



contact so as to apply the only real test, namely, that of super- 

 position. When we can do so, it seems to me the case is con- 

 clusive. 



In Mr. Jukes-Browne's Survey Memoir on the eastern part of 

 the county of Lincolnshire, there is only one section given in which 

 the Pleistocene Mammals occur, namely, at Burgh. Here remains 

 of E. antiquus, B. leptorhinus and Bos primigenius, or of Bison, were 

 found in gravel underlying 3 to 6 feet of Boulder-clay and underlaid 

 by a black turfy bed and by marl {op. cit. p. 86). 



At Little Bytham, in the same county, Mr. Skertchly found 

 Corbicula fluminalis, which marks the same horizon, under Boulder- 

 clay. 



We will now turn to East Anglia. Eecent discoveries have tended 

 to increase, rather than to solve, the difficulty of fixing the exact 

 age of the Forest Bed. The discovery of remains of the Musk 

 Sheep, of the Hyasna, the Glutton, all animals characteristic of 

 Pleistocene times, seems to suggest either that the Forest Bed has 

 been hitherto ante-dated ; or that, like the Norwich Crag, it may 

 consist of re-arranged or remaine materials. Whatever view may 

 be adopted, there can be little doubt now that the Mammoth occurs 

 in the Forest Bed. Dr. Leith Adams, writing in 1881, describes 

 several molars found in it by Mr. Savin, which he unhesitatingly 

 identifies as Mammoth, and he adds : " I can have no hesitation in 

 admitting the Mammoth among the pre-Grlacial mammals of the 

 British Isles" (Pal. Mem. p. 174). 



This last clause is no doubt a deduction from the fact that the 

 Forest Bed, as exposed at Cromer, underlies the whole of the Drift 

 deposits. 



Mr. Austen, writing in the 7th volume of the Q J.Gr.S., speaks of 

 the beds of terrestrial origin, i.e. of the land surface exposed at 

 Eunton and Mundesley, and says the Mammalian remains found in 

 the overlying Till have in every instance been derived from portions 

 of the expanse of that former terrestrial surface {op. cit. p. 133). 



Again, Professor Dawkins tells me one of Mr. Gunn's Elephant 

 teeth from the Norfolk coast was striated and rubbed as if by glacial 

 action. 



It is in Suffolk, however, not in Norfolk, that the most interesting 

 and critical test case is supposed to have been forthcoming, namely, 

 the classical section at Hoxne first described by Prof. Prestwich in 

 1859, and which, for a long time, was accepted as conclusive, and is 

 still the basis of the orthodox geological opinion about the age of 

 palEeolithic man. It seems to me that the conclusions based upon 

 this particular instance will have to be surrendered. In the first 

 place the sections given by Prof. Prestwich are most uncertain in 

 their reading. Thus in the first and most important section no bed 

 of Boulder-clay is given at all. In the section of the pit in which 

 flint implements and Mammalian remains were actually found, all 

 the beds contain fresh-water shells or peat, or Mammalian bones, 

 and there is no trace of drift at all (see Phil. Trans, vol. 150, 

 p. 305). 



