C PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [^^Y 1 898, 



suitable to them. "W^hen the northern forms reached the South of 

 England, the conditions in and around the mountainous districts 

 were such that few animals could remain there, as most of the 

 Yalleys and plains had become buried under ice and snow, and they 

 would have to seek feeding-grounds outside these areas. It is to 

 this period that we must assign the remains of the mammoth and 

 rhinoceros which are so abundantly found on the old land-surfaces 

 on the north of the Thames, usually hidden under great thicknesses 

 of drift, as in Endsleigh Street, and in other places in Middlesex. 

 Here, and in some areas farther south, they could have lived during 

 most of the Glacial period until at last driven away, when the 

 valleys and plains became covered with vast sheets of water, due in 

 part probably to subsidence, but largely owing to the gradual 

 melting of the ice and snow farther north. Whether the mammoth 

 and rhinoceros continued to live much longer in some parts of the 

 South and South-west of England there is very little evidence at 

 present to show. The supposition, however, held by some that 

 they returned to the glaciated areas after the Grlacial period had 

 passed away does not seem to me in any way probable, for hitherto 

 their remains have only been found either under or in the Drift, 

 and not above it, excepting when they have been washed out from 

 the earlier deposits. 



Sir Joseph Prestwich, who, as all will allow, had a unique 

 acquaintance with the Pliocene and Pleistocene deposits in 

 England and on the Continent, in his important paper read before 

 the Society in 1887,^ says : — ' My first impressions with respect 

 to the Yalley of the Somme were : — that the high-level gravels 

 originated in early Glacial times ; that the intermediate stages and 

 terraces were formed during the excavation of the valley as a 

 consequence of the great Glacial and post-Glacial floods: and that 

 the low- level gravels formed the concluding stage of those con- 

 ditions. But in the absence of data, since acquired, the strong 

 prepossessions then existing, and the novelty of the subject, I was 

 then led to conclude that the whole might be post-Glacial.' 



' So much evidence has, however, since been brought forward with 

 respect to the so-called pre-Glacial man, that I feel I am now 

 justified in reverting in great part to my original position. The 

 cave-work of Mr. Tiddeman and Dr. Hicks gives strong presumptive 

 evidence of the earlier geological appearance of Man in the British 



^ Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xliii (1887) p. 406. 



