8. V. Wood, Jim. — The Post-Glacial Period. 155 



find sucli a non-Glacial clay in that of Hessle, in Yorkshire, and 

 also, as it appears to me, in the South of England along the coast of 

 Sussex, about Selsey and Bracklesham.^ Both the Hessle and the 

 Sussex clays occur in the neighbourhood of the chalk country, and 

 ought, if accumulated under similar Glacial conditions to the Glacial- 

 clays of East Anglia, to be similarly constituted, so far as its 

 general character is concerned, which is not the case. I shall refer 

 in the sequel to both these clays, which seem to me to have been ac- 

 cumulated long after the emergence of the principal part of the land 

 from the Glacial sea, and long after the Glacial period proper had 

 passed away ; and to furnish evidence of a return to cold conditions 

 after a period of warmth, during which Northern Europe became 

 stocked by the great Mammalia. 



2. The Palceontological evidence. — It is well known that Northern 

 Europe and Asia were inhabited, after the emergence from the Glacial 

 sea, by various species of large mammalia, and notably by several 

 species of the genera Elephas, Bhinoceros, and Hippopotamus, 

 whose living congeners inhabit exclusively hot countries. The oc- 

 currence, in a frozen state, in Siberia, of individuals belonging to 

 two out of these genera, clad in a coat of hair, seems to have led 

 geologists to the conclusion that these pachydermata, as well as the 

 Cave Lion, were specially adapted for a cold climate ; and that their 

 extinction before the historical period, all over Europe, and Central 

 and Northern Asia, must have been due to some other cause than 

 that of inclemency of climate ; and the favourite hypothesis seems 

 to have been that they owed their extinction to the attacks of Post- 

 glacial man, whose implements are not unfrequently associated with 

 their remains in Post-glacial deposits. A little reflection will, how- 

 ever, I think, show that much improbability attaches to this idea. 



Africa has been from the remotest historical times peopled by 

 numerous inhabitants, and to these the use of iron seems long to 

 have been known ; but until the ivory hunters with fire-arms, and 

 more recently with rifles and explosive bullets, began to persecute 

 them, the African pachydermata seem to have maintained their 

 numbers. Similarly the civilization of Southern Asia is very ancient, 

 and the use of metals probably dates back there several thousand 

 years'; but what have the civilized Asiatics with the accessories of 

 metal weapons and of the domesticated horse done' towards extermin- 

 ating the Asiatic pachydermata and great felines ? Modern sportsmen 

 with their destructive weapons have done more towards this in half 

 a century than has been done during thousands of years of antecedent 

 civilization. Are we then to suppose that thousands of years before 

 this civilization even commenced (and when no doubt similar un- 

 civilized races existed in Southern Asia and in Africa to exterminate, 

 if they could, the great mammalia of those regions also) the scattered 

 tribes of men who managed to exist along the shores and rivers of 

 Europe, and of Northern and Central Asia, exterminated with their 



1 Brought to notice by Mr. Godwin- Austen. See Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, vol. 

 xiii., p, 55. Like the Hessle, the Sussex Clay contains numerous chalk fragments, 

 but is quite different from chalky Glacial clay. 



