278 
ditions. At Hoxne the interval between the 
deposit of the boulder clay and of the im- 
plement-bearing beds is distinctly proved to 
have witnessed at least two noteworthy 
changes in climate. The beds immediately 
reposing on the clay are characterized by 
the presence of alder in abundance, of hazel 
and yew, as well as by that of numerous 
flowering plants indicative of a temperate 
climate very different from that under which 
the boulder clay itself was formed. Above 
these beds characterized by temperate 
plants comes a thick and more recent series 
of strata, in which leaves of the dwarf 
arctic willow and birch abound, and which 
were in all probability deposited under con- 
ditions like those of the cold regions of 
Siberia and North America. 
Ata higher level and of more recent date 
than these—from which they are entirely 
distinct—are the beds containing Paleo- 
lithic implements, formed in all probability 
under conditions not essentially different 
from those of the present day. However 
this may be, we have now conclusive evi- 
dence that the Paleolithic implements are 
in the eastern counties of England of a date 
long posterior to that of the great chalky 
boulder clay. 
It may be said, and said truly, that the 
implements at Hoxne cannot be shown to 
belong to the beginning rather than to some 
later stage of the Paleolithic Period. The 
changes, however, that have taken place at 
Hoxne in the surface configuration of the 
country prove that the beds containing the 
implements cannot belong to the close of 
that period. 
It must, moreover, be remembered that 
in what are probably the earliest of the 
Paleolithic deposits of the eastern counties, 
those at the highest level, near Brandon in 
Norfolk, where the gravels contain the lar- 
gest proportion of pebbles derived from 
Glacial beds, some of the implements them- 
selves have been manufactured from mate- 
SCIENCE. 
[N. 8. Von. VI. No. 138. 
rials not native to the spot, but brought 
from a distance, and derived in all proba- 
bility either from the boulder clay or from 
some of the beds associated with it. 
We must, however, take a wider view of 
the whole question, for it must not for a 
moment be supposed that there are the 
slightest grounds for believing that the 
civilization, such as it was, of the Paleo- 
lithic Period originated in the British Isles. 
We find in other countries implements so 
identical in form and character with British 
specimens that they might have been manu- 
factured by the same hands. These occur 
over large areas in France under similar 
conditions to those that prevail in England. 
The same forms have been discovered in the 
ancient river gravels of Italy, Spain and 
Portugal. Some few have been recorded 
from Africa, and analogous types occur in 
considerable numbers in the south of that 
continent. On the banks of the Nile, many 
hundreds of feet above its present level, im- 
plements of the European types have been 
discovered ; while in Somaliland, in an an- 
cient river valley at a great elevation above 
the sea, Mr. Seton-Karr has collected a 
large number of implements formed of flint 
and quartzite, which, judging from their 
form and character, might have been dug 
out of the drift deposits of the Somme or 
the Seine, the Thames or the ancient 
Solent. 
In the valley of the Euphrates imple- 
ments of the same kind have also been 
found, and again farther east, in the lateritic 
deposits of southern India, they have been 
obtained in considerable numbers. It is 
not a little remarkable, and is at the same 
time highly suggestive, that a form of im- 
plement almost peculiar to Madras reap- 
pears among implements from the very 
ancient gravels of the Manzanares at Mad- 
rid. In the case of the African discoveries 
we have as yet no definite paleontological 
evidence by which to fix their antiquity, 
