FOOTPRINTS OF VANISHED RACES IN CORNWALL. 277 



of England is concerned, are found in the sudden and complete 

 disappearance of the great Palteolithic mammalia ; ^^ in the lime- 

 stone fissures at Plymouth filled with bones; iu the head of 

 angular rubble, which lies over our raised beaches ; and in our 

 Cornish deposits of stream-tin. As long ago as 1823, Dr. Buck- 

 land stated that the detrital tin dej)osits of Devon and Cornwall 

 were of diluvial origin.^* A few years later, Mr. Joseph Carne 

 maintained that the stream tin beds were formed by a great flood, 

 which had never been repeated.^^ Sir Henry De la Beche held 

 that the stream-tin deposits owed their origin to a great deluge, 

 which destroyed the lion, elephant, hysena and rhinoceros, and 

 filled the limestone fissures at Plymouth with their bones.^*^ This 

 view is also advanced by Sir Henry Howorth.^' Sir Joseph 

 Prestwich has gone much further. He has maintained^^ that our 

 Cornish stream-tin beds, the head of rubble, and the ossiferous 

 fissures, were all formed at one time by a great deluge and sub- 

 mergence, which produced what he calls "The Bubble Drift." 

 With this view, I entirely agree. It may be, also, that those 

 aberrant deposits in Cornwall which so perplex geologists, such 

 as the gravels of Crousa Downs and Polcrebo near Crowan,^^ as 

 well as the sands and clays of St. Agnes' Beacon, are all the 

 work of the same diluvial catastroj)he.** So perished Palaeolithic 

 man, overwhelmed by the surging waters of a vast inundation. 



The curtain falls over Cornwall at the close of the Palaeo- 

 lithic age, and when it rises again all is new, and we seem to be 



53. I allude particularly to the liou, hytena, leopard, elephant, rhinoceros and 

 hippopotamus. 



54. Reliqilice Dihivia7ia;, pp. 2x8, 219. 



55. Journal of the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall, vol. iv, pp. 55, 56, iii. 

 Mr. Game's papers should be read by all who wish to gain a good idea of the 

 question. 



56. Report on the Geology oj Cornwall, Devon, and West Somerset, pp. 400, 4 [2, 

 416. 



57. Geological Magaziite, vol. ITS., 1882, p. 510. 



58. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Geological Society, vol. xlviii, 1892, pp, 316, 

 317, 342. Even so great a champion of uniformity in geology as Dr. J. A. Geikie is 

 compelled to admit that the closing scene of the Quarternary era, which includes 

 the Pateolithic period, was one of " torrential rivers and vast inundations." — Pre- 

 historic Europe, p. 543. 



59. For a description of the Polcrebo gravels, see the paper by Mr. William 

 Tyack in The Transactions of the Royal Geological Society of Cormvall, vol. ix, p. 177. 



60. Sir Joseph Prestwich considers that the beds of sand and clay on St. Agnes' 

 Beacon, are a part of the Rubble Drift, and were deposited during a submergence at 

 the end of the Palceolithic a.gs. — Q-iiarterly Geological Journal, 1892, p. 316. 



