THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN QUESTIONED. 21 
of plants between, half-turned to coal, a mass of clay, moraine-like on the top, tell 
of the time when Alpine ice crept farther down the hills, and touched upon the 
lake, now more, now less encroaching. In these beds the peaty mass of lignite, 
known as Diirnten coal, was largely dug for fuel. I have worked a long time 
down below to see the evidence myself. The sequence of the beds is clear. But 
recently two Swiss professors have proclaimed that they have obtained proofs 
incontestable that man was there, and wove a basket, fragments of which were 
found among the drifted plants which formed the coal. ‘These fragments, it is 
said, consist of pointed sticks, sharpened across the grain, not tapering naturally, _ 
and a cross set of binding withes, all now pressed and changed, but by such char- 
acters referred to work of man. Now I have found myself along the shore frag- 
ments of wood and twigs half decomposed and waveworn till they were cut to a 
point obliquely to the grain, as they describe the Diirnten sticks. Across such 
fragments often others fell, and when the whole was then compressed what won- 
der if they left a mark of wattle or of basket-work ? and the whole mass has sutf- 
_ fered such great pressure from the superincumbent weight of clay that all the 
round twigs and.stems are squeezed quite flat, as in the specimens before you. 
These Diirnten pointed sticks, however, I have not seen, and, therefore, speak 
with caution, showing only how I think the thing might be otherwise explained. 
Widespread beds of loam and sand, and gravel, cover the lower levels of 
East Anglia; and, probably ranging over a vast period, have been collectively 
described as ‘‘ middle-glacial,” for below are glacial beds, and in the middle series 
bowlder clay, and over them, whether in part vemanie or not, another bowlder 
clay. Lying in hollows and on the flanks of valleys,-cut through this ancient loam 
and other beds, are river terraces of later date; and these, because in great part — 
made up of the older beds, are like them, and require experience to distinguish. 
In these old terrace-deposits implements of man’s undoubted work have long been 
found; but recently it has been said that some of these beds belong to the older 
series.{ This, then, becomes a matter of opinion. For my part, being well 
acquainted with the deposits in question, and having listened to the evidence, I 
give my testimony quite against the Glacial or inter-Glacial age of any of the beds 
from which the hatchets came. It is, however, said that other evidence has since 
been found, conclusive as to this. I can but criticise that which has been adduced ; 
but I will say that if such has been found and been so long withheld, while there 
are so many deeply interested, and so many who would like to verify at once and 
on the ground, the statements made, then I do hold that there has not been shown 
that love of full investigation which is the soul of science. 
In many countries where rocks of limestone tower in cliffs and crags above 
the valleys, and are tapped below by undermining streams, the rain which falls — 
upon the higher ground is lost in cracks and joints, and carries off the rock dis- 
solved in water, which contains a little acid caught by the falling rain or drawn 
from decomposing plants. ‘The fissures thus enlarged into the gaping chasms 
aa 
called ‘‘swallows’ holes,” the ‘‘katabothra” of the Greeks, admit a copious tor- 
{Mem. Geol. Surv. Geology of Fenland. 
