178 Notices of Memoirs — J. Geikie, Antiquity of Man. 



Britain since the close of the Glacial epoch, it was clear that the 

 hippopotami and elephants and other southern mammalia associated 

 with palaeolithic implements could not belong to Postglacial times : 

 they must be either of Interglacial or Preglacial age. This con- 

 clusion received very strong support from the peculiar manner in 

 which the implement-bearing gravels were distributed. These were 

 confined solely to the south of England. None occurred in the north 

 of England, in Scotland, in Ireland, in Scandinavia, or in Switzer- 

 land. In Scotland and in Switzerland we did get remains of the 

 animals which were contemporaneous with the men of the old stone 

 period, but these remains were all of Interglacial age. The same 

 was the case in North America. If we took a map of the northern 

 hemisphere, and coloured upon it all the ground covered with the 

 deposits .that were laid down during the last cold period of the 

 Glacial epoch, we should find that none of the old pachyderms 

 (hippopotami, elephants, etc.) and no flint implements were ever 

 met with at the surface within that area. We should, indeed, get 

 the old mammalia, but only in Preglacial and Interglacial deposits. 

 But immediately beyond the limits of the coloured area we should 

 observe that in Europe all the valleys (as in the south of England 

 and in France) were more or less filled with vast deposits of river 

 gravels, which contain abundant remains of the old pachyderms, 

 and immense numbers of flint instruments. And it was well known 

 that in America the great bone deposits, so abundant in the Missis- 

 sippi valley and elsewhere, ceased to appear whenever the limits 

 of the northern drift were approached from the south. These 

 facts, he thought, could only be explained in one way — namely, by 

 admitting that palasolithic man and his congeners belonged to inter- 

 glacial times and in all probability to Preglacial times also. The 

 absence of palaeolithic deposits from the regions referred to was thus 

 explained in a simple and reasonable way. The great confluent 

 glaciers had ploughed out these deposits, and what portion the 

 glaciers had spared had been subsequently covered up by marine 

 accumulations during the last great submergence. But in those 

 regions which the glaciers had not reached, and which were never 

 submerged, the palteolithic gravels still existed in great force. Mr. 

 Geikie then gave some account of Mr. Croll's theory, which explains 

 the cause of great cosmical changes of climate, and showed how 

 admirably Mr. Croll's conclusions tallied with the general results 

 obtained from a study of the glacial deposits. The date given by 

 Mr. CroU for the beginning of the glacial epoch was about 240,000 

 years ago ; and this epoch, with all its alternations of cold and warm 

 periods, lasted for about 1,600 centuries. Many most competent 

 judges inclined to believe that man was of Preglacial age, which 

 would give him an antiquity in Britain of more than 200,000 years. 

 It was certain, at all events, that the animals with which palaeolithic 

 man was associated did live in Preglacial and during Interglacial 

 times. This, of course, did not prove that man was of preglacial 

 age ; but since his implements were found at the very bottom of our 

 cave deposits and old river gravels, it was highly probable that he 



