CONCLUSION. 545 



river-deposits might alone suffice to convince us that these can- 

 not belong to postglacial times, as some English geologists have 

 maintained. They occur as superficial deposits only in those 

 regions which were not subjected to glacial abrasion, or covered 

 with glacial accumulations during the latest phase of the Ice 

 Age. They are either entirely absent or very meagrely devel- 

 oped in areas which were overflowed by the ice of the last cold 

 epoch ; and when they do occur in such regions they are inva- 

 riably buried under glacial or fluvio-glacial detritus. In short, 

 the Pleistocene river-gravels of France and Southern England 

 are represented by the Interglacial beds of alpine and northern 

 regions. The same fauna and flora characterise both series, and 

 the physical evidence proves to demonstration that they must 

 be contemporaneous. To whatever part of Europe we turn, we 

 find that the youngest Pleistocene deposits, with their mam- 

 malian remains and relics of Palaeolithic man, give token of 

 cold climatic conditions having supervened towards the close of 

 the period. In northern and alpine regions they are covered 

 with morainic materials ; in the greater river- valleys they lie 

 concealed below sheets of flood-loam ; in many caves they are 

 overlaid with similar loam, or with a coarse breccia, which is 

 indicative of severe frost. Even in the more southern latitudes 

 they often lie buried under thick heaps of frost-riven debris, 

 which no longer accumulates, but on the contrary is wasting 

 away under present climatic conditions, while in no part of 

 Europe do Pleistocene deposits ever rest upon the glacial, fluvio- 

 glacial, and subaerial accumulations of the latest glacial epoch. 1 

 Although Palaeolithic implements have been discovered at 

 Brandon, under the great chalky boulder-clay of East Anglia, 

 they have not yet been chronicled from the preglacial deposits 

 of England. Thus, we are assured that Palaeolithic man lived 

 in our area before the climax of the Glacial Period, when the 

 northern mer de glace assumed its greatest development, but we 

 do not know whether he appeared here before the advent of the 

 first glacial epoch — that, namely, during which the Cromer 

 boulder-clay was deposited. In France, however, implements 



2 N 



