586 PRIMEVAL MAN, 



known parallel. How fared it with the large Mammalia 

 during this mighty change ? Were the older forms killed 

 off, and newer species intercalated, or did any of the former, 

 and if so, what number, survive through it, and how were 

 they affected ? In this case the argument of the imperfec- 

 tion of the geological record, which has been so powerfully 

 handled by Darwin, could not be urged ; the materials were 

 abundant, and the deposits which marked the successive 

 changes of dry land, submergence, and re -emergence, were 

 amply represented. I was well accpiainted, through the un- 

 reserved communication of intimate friendly intercourse, 

 with the gradual development of his views on the origin of 

 species; and it seemed that here was a case where quad- 

 rupeds which were either cotemporaries of man or close 

 upon his period, could be traced back into remote time, and 

 thus furnish a test of the mutability or persistence of specific 

 characters, of much higher value than that yielded by ob- 

 servation upon living animals, necessarily limited to a brief 

 lapse of time — in fact, to the personal experience of the 

 observer. 



The resrdts of these inquiries were, in part, communicated 

 to the Geological Society, in 1857, in two memoirs, the first 

 of which appeared in extenso, the second in abstract, in its 

 Quarterly Journal. 1 In the former it was attempted to be 

 shown that the principal species of the large fossil Ungulata, 

 such as Mastodon Arvemensis, Elephas meridionalis, Elephas 

 antiquus, E. priscus, Rhinoceros leptorhinus and Hippopo- 

 tamus, might occur alike in the Sub-Apennine Pliocenes of 

 Italy and in the Norwich Crag, indicating the formations to 

 be of the same age. In the second, it was stated that the 

 same extinct species, with the exception of Mastodon Arver- 

 nensis, are found in the ' Elephant-bed,' and Lacustrine 

 blue clays of the Norfolk coast, which underlie the ' Boulder- 

 clay,' proving them also to belong to the Pliocene period. 

 Finding that the same Elephas antiquus and the variety called 

 E. (Loxodon) priscus, along with Rhinoceros leptorhinus and 

 Hippopotamus major, although unaccompanied by Elephas 

 meridionalis, were abundant at Grays Thurrock and Brent- 

 ford, I was led by the Mammalian evidence to consider that 

 the fluviatile deposits of the Valley of the Thames were 

 also of an earlier age than any part of the Boulder-clay. This 

 inference my subsequent researches in the caves proved to 

 be erroneous ; and in a recent paper I have shown that the 

 true Mammoth, E. primigenius, had its range of existence 

 stretching as far back in time as the preglacial forest-bed of 

 Norfolk, and the deposits of the ancient lake -formation of 

 1 See antca, pp. 1 and 76. — [Ed.] 



