202 INTERGLACIAL LOESS, ETC. [vol. lxxv, 



Author appeared to be of more recent date than the proboscidean 

 remains. 



Mr. A. S. Kexxard wished to congratulate the Author on a 

 most important piece of work, and one that added much to our 

 knowledge. Hitherto the Pleistocene fauna and flora of Durham 

 were unknown, and the careful methods of collecting adopted had 

 rilled up a gap in our knowledge. It was clear, from the varying 

 composition of the matrix, that deposits of more than one age 

 were present in the fissures, and this would account for the several 

 horizons indicated by the contained fossils. 



Dr. Stanley Smith remarked upon the brecciated appearance 

 of the clay, as an indication of the frozen state of the material at 

 the time when it was rammed into the fissures. 



Mr. C. E. N. Bromehead particularly welcomed the Author's 

 attempt to correlate the sequence of Drift deposits with the Glacial 

 epochs recognized on the Continent. Apparently the Author 

 referred the Scandinavian Drift to the Riss, and the local Drift to 

 the Wiirm stages. That agreed well with the conclusion arrived 

 at by Mr. Dewey and himself in the Thames Valley, that the Chalky 

 Boulder-Clay and the late Pleistocene Arctic period of Ponder" s 

 End, etc. corresponded with the same stages. The later fossiliferous 

 deposit found by the Author beneath the local Drift contained 

 freshwater mollusca, which Mr. Kennard said were not older than 

 late Pleistocene ; it might be roughly contemporaneous with the 

 Ponder's-End deposits. Again, the Author regarded the period 

 between the two stages as one of rapid denudation, and referred 

 the formation of Castle-Eden and Hesleden Denes to it ; that 

 agreed well with a large amount of erosion in the Thames Valley 

 between the Chalky Boulder- Clay and the Arctic period. All such 

 correlations were necessarily hypothetical, but the more they were 

 attempted for different districts, the greater was the chance of 

 arriving at a definite conclusion. 



The President (Mr. G. W. Lamplugh) said that the Author 

 was to be congratulated upon a notable addition to our scanty list 

 of fossiliferous Preglacial or early- Glacial deposits in Britain. That 

 the fossils were found between tide-marks is in keeping with the 

 usual condition on the East Coast, as in this position, where the 

 deposits are permanently saturated, the fossils are more likely to be 

 preserved than at higher levels where they are subjected to the 

 circulation of -ground-water. The deposit described as lcess seemed 

 hardly to deserve the prominence ascribed to it by the Author. 

 The heterogeneous Drift-material of the Yorkshire coast included 

 many limited local deposits of peculiar composition, doubtless due 

 to the complex conditions at or near the fluctuating ice-border, and 

 these were particularly numerous and variable in Holderness between 

 the Basement- Clay, which was the equivalent of the Authors 

 ' Scandinavian Drift,' and the Purple Clay, equivalent to part of 

 his 'Main Drift.' But, in many places, there was evidence for 

 uninterrupted glacial conditions, from the deposition of the lower 

 Boulder- Clay to that of the higher. The significant feature of 



