XCviii PBOCEEDiyGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. PJ^ay 1 898, 



case is shown by the findiDg of their remains in close association 

 in the hyaena-den at Kirkdale and in other caverns in Yorkshire. 

 Prof. Phillips many years ago came to the conclnsion that the 

 Kirkdale Cave was occupied in the ' pre-Glacial condition of the 

 land which is now Yorkshire,' and he also maintained that the 

 lowest Hessle Gravels which rest upon the Chalk, and which con- 

 tain mammoth and other remains, and are covered by Boulder 

 Clay, are pre-Glacial in age. 



Mr. G. W. Lamplugh's careful researches seem to show clearly 

 that the Sewerby ' infra-Glacial Beds,' which have yielded so many 

 Pleistocene remains, are at the base of the Glacial series in that area. 

 He says of the fauna at the base of the drift at Sewerby : — ' It is 

 essentially the fauna of the Kirkdale Cave.' ^ In his conclusions, 

 given in the same paper (p. 428), when referring to the|physical 

 conditions prevailing in the area during the formation of the drift- 

 deposits, he says : — ' At a period not long anterior to that of the 

 glaciation of the coast, Plamborough Head was in existence as a bold 

 promontory jutting out into a sea whose level was slightly above that 

 of to-day. Most of the mammals characteristic of the Glacial period 

 were already living, and tenanted the interior in large numbers. 

 The chmate was moist and not very severe, the prevalent winds, as 

 shown by the sand-dunes of Sewerby, being from the west or south- 

 west. After the land had remained for a long time stationary, a 

 slow elevatory movement set in, and the climate became much 

 colder ; so that the Chalk-surface was disintegrated by frost and 

 eroded by sudden floods, which spread thick beds of muddy detritus 

 over much of the low or slightly sloping ground in the vicinity. 

 Meanwhile the bed of the Xorth Sea was being rapidly filled with 

 ice through the great extension of the Scandinavian glaciers ; till 

 at length the Scotch and Scandinavian ice coalesced, and what 

 remained of the North Sea was well nigh ice-locked.' 



Although some southern forms whose remains have been 

 discovered in the forest-bed on the Xorfolk coast do not appear to 

 have reached much farther north than that area, this does not, in 

 my opinion, make it in any way certain that even these were not, 

 in part at least, contemporaneous with the so-called mixed early 

 Pleistocene fauna of the more northern districts. It is also an 

 important fact that many of the most characteristic animals whose 

 remains have been discovered in the caverns in Xorth TTales and 

 Yorkshire are now always included in the fauna of the Porest Bed. 



1 Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xlvii (1891) p. 412. 



