Trof. T. Rupert Jones — Antiquity of Man. 271 



human inhabitants, which have been left high up in the limestone 

 cliffs, whilst the rivers have worn away the gorge below to a great 

 depth (nearly 300 ft. at Gailenreuth ; 75 ft. at Brixham) . This is 

 shown by the presence of certain pebbles in the deposits within the 

 cave, which must have rolled across the interval, from the other side 

 of the valley, whilst a floor existed at a level of the cave. If this 

 excavation be due to the violent rush of the torrent from the in- 

 creased slope of its channel, caused by the rising of the land, what 

 was the rate of elevation ? Further, some few of the caves contain 

 stone implements of ruder make than those left in others ; and the 

 valley-gravels left behind as terraces and isolated patches by the 

 rivers, which have deepened and narrowed their channels, also con- 

 tain such rude and even ruder implements, carefully, after all, but 

 roughly chipped, and doubtless serving very well the purpose to 

 which these early people applied them. These gravels contain 

 remains of the Arctic animals. Their age is to be reckoned by the 

 time required for their formation and their distribution. The subse- 

 quent excavation of lower valleys, and the other stages of time 

 already indicated, necessarily lengthen their chronology. Their 

 existence is owing to the early formation of gravel-flats and plains 

 of loam out of the debris of the land, when it was far above its 

 present height ; and when Western Europe had been raised so high 

 out of water as to comprise the British Islands as far as the well- 

 known " hundred-fathom-line," which when raised to the water- 

 level would of course add at least 600 ft. to the height of the land's 

 surface. The Alps were much higher than now ; and probably 

 Snowdon stood at least 2000 ft. higher than at present. This eleva- 

 tion originated in the great alteration of the earth's crust in this 

 portion of the globe by contraction, immediately after the long 

 "Tertiary Period" of geologists, bringing in the new conditions of 

 geography, hydrography, and distribution of life in what is known 

 as the "post-Tertiary Period." The great uprise of land was prob- 

 ably slow ; it introduced enormous glaciers, grooving out great 

 gorges, which, after vast and continuous changes, the greatest rivers 

 have scarcely yet filled up with their plain-making detritus. Whether 

 men existed or not in this earliest part of the Quaternary period is 

 as yet unproved. A great reaction took place, and a great and gradual 

 subsidence lowered plain and mountain, until Snowdon sank to be 

 an island not more than 1000 ft. at most in height, and the shoulders 

 of the mountain were below the great northern sea ; for, when it 

 rose again, Moel Tryfaen (now 1300 ft. above the sea) bore up the 

 well-known sands and shingle with marine shells, in witness of the 

 change. Man had set foot in this region by that time ; for when 

 the glaciers, during some of their oscillations, occupied the great 

 vales of Western Yorkshire, one of them left some of the charac- 

 teristic laminated mud in a cave opening against its lateral moraine, 

 and this mud buried up some old cave-earth, in which are bones of 

 elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, hyaena, and man. This glacial 

 clay was surmounted by a cave-earth formed after the glacier had 

 melted away and left the valley open but cold, for reindeer bones 



