T. M. Reade—Human Skull from Southport. 547 
took place; (3) that during the last maximum extension of the 
ice-sheet the land stood higher than at present; (4) that when 
the great load of ice was removed from the land, the submergence 
of upwards of 100 feet took place; (5) that after a vast mass of 
morainic débris had been laid down on the sea-bottom, it rose up 
higher than at present, so that a forest flourished upon what is again 
the bed of the ocean; and (6) when all abnormal conditions had 
disappeared, the land was again depressed and re-elevated to its 
present level. 
A series of geological phenomena more inconsistent with the : new 
theory it is impossible to conceive. 
it is no doubt extremely difficult to account for all these “ups and 
downs in the world,” but it seems to me that the theory of depression 
by loading and elevation by lightening does not help us much in 
explaining them. At any rate the Glacial and Post-glacial history 
of Scotland gives no countenance to the theory. 
V.—Tuer Human SKULL FOUND NEAR SOUTHPORT. 
By T. Mexiarp Reaps, F.G.S. 
HE author of a paper on the above subject read before the 
Anthropological Section of the British Association at Southport 
having made the startling assertion that, ‘In immediate proximity 
(to where the skull was found) were numerous bones of the Irish 
Hk and Reindeer,” I feel it incumbent on me to relate the facts of 
the case. Unfortunately I was not at the meeting when the paper 
was read, so could not contradict the statement on the spot. 
The Human Skull in question was discovered in cutting a trench 
for a sewer in Gloucester Road, Birkdale, while I, as engineer of 
the work, was carrying out the main sewerage of Birkdale in 1872. 
Mr. Kershaw, who lives opposite the spot, happened to secure it 
from the workmen, but through my influence he presented it to the 
Royal College of Surgeons, and before sending it, I had two casts 
made of it, one of which I gave to the Liverpool Museum, the other 
I still possess. It was on the Museum cast that Dr. Barron’s paper 
was founded—at all events, the cast was exhibited at the reading 
of the paper, so there can be no doubt as to its identity. A paper on 
the skull from materials prepared by me was read soon after its dis- 
covery by Professor Busk, at the Anthropological Society. 
The skeleton from which the skull was severed by the sheet 
piling of the trench lay at a depth of 8 feet below the then surface, 
and upon an old land surface of peaty soil; being covered only by 
blown sand. This old land surface is at the same horizon as the 
submarine Forest-bed,! but nowhere at Birkdale in several miles of 
sewers did we come on the remains of anything that could be digni- 
fied by the name of “trees”; there were in the peat small birch 
branches and stems. The soil or peat bed was underlain by an 
1 A section of the sewer trench and peat bed may be seen in my ‘‘ Post- Monel 
Geology of Lancashire and Cheshire,’’ Proc. ot Liverpool Geol. Soc., 1871-2 
