liV PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



From these facts it has been concluded that the mammalian bones 

 and the worked flints were deposited in and with the gravel by natural 

 operations ; that the extinct mammalia named were coeval with some 

 race of beings which occupied that district, and have left this, but 

 no other, proof of the possession of a rude kind of art and a low 

 degree of intelligence. If we must ascribe these flint instruments 

 (which seem inferior even to the specimens of Australian art) to 

 the agency of the children of Adam, geological time, marked by the 

 extinct mammalia, seems to be at last joined, though not clearly, 

 to the human period, but not with any known data of properly his- 

 toric time. 



A result so interesting cannot be received without prudent hesita- 

 tion and the hope of more complete evidence, not confined to one 

 bed of gravel. Still, results in this direction could not be wholly 

 unexpected. Elephas primigenius had its hair still attached to the 

 skin in the ice cliffs at the mouth of the Lena. Bos longifrons is an 

 extinct species, but it survived to be found among the reliquiae of our 

 own British ancestors, in their places of sepulture*. The Irish Elk 

 and Hippopotamus major have been often found in lacustrine depo- 

 sits and peat-bogs of post-glacial datef. Of the latter animal, three 

 skeletons in admirable preservation were taken from the alluvial 

 sediments in the valley of the Aire, — sediments which lower down 

 .the valley yielded, at the bottom, Bed Deer and petrified hazel-wood ; 

 above these, the oars of an ancient oak canoe ; and higher still, but 

 yet several feet below the surface, the coin of an English king. 



Here seems to be a continuous river-action from the period of the 

 Hippopotamus to the present day — following the same declivities, 

 broken by no convulsion, marked by no great physical change. The 

 valley-deposits of Amiens and the Somme, like those of Oxford or 

 Beading and the Thames, have a distinct relation to the general 

 configuration and slopes of the land, and in this sense, as well as 

 in the character of the organic contents, must be referred to the 

 latest of the geological periods. How much of analogy exists be- 

 tween the main characters of the gravel of the French and the 

 English valleys, and how much of interest belongs to many almost 

 unexamined fluviatile deposits of old date, may be illustrated by 

 some observations which I made a few years since near Oxford. 



At Yarnton, a few miles north of Oxford, the valley of the Thames 

 expands so as to unite with that of the Cherwell ; and here a very 

 large deposit of gravel occurs, under some considerable depth of sur- 

 face-soil. Opened for the works of the railway, it was found to 

 yield teeth and tusks of Elephas primigenius, bones of men, and 

 ancient pottery. On visiting the spot I found about 16 feet of 

 ground excavated. At the bottom, Oxford clay ; on this a hard bed 

 of the glacial drift, with boulders and fragments compacted toge- 

 ther, chiefly of the quartzite so common in this drift near Oxford : 

 on the top and cemented to this bed were many teeth and tusks of 



* Owen is the authority for this statement, 

 t In North Lancashire, 



