244 THE PLEISTOCENE DEPOSITS AROUXD CAMBRIDGE, [vol. lxXV. 



Mr. M. C. Burkitt ventured to disagree with Sir William 

 Boyd Dawkins's statement that the Lower Palaeolithic could not be 

 •divided into periods hj using the contained implements as fossils. 

 The speaker had done much work abroad, in the field, with 

 H. Breuil, H. Obermaier, and others, and he could testify that, 

 where the implements had not been rolled into a deposit subse- 

 quently by water action, such divisions were possible. Chellean 

 types do indeed develop up into Acheulean, but the Mousterian 

 was quite another culture. With regard to the Barnwell- Station 

 gravels the speaker was disinclined to ascribe to them a Wiirmian 

 age. He preferred to consider them as of Buhl age (that is, equi- 

 valent in time to the Magdalenian civilization of France, which 

 perhaps never really reached England). At that time the reindeer 

 (whose bones occur in the Barnwell- Station gravel) arrived as far 

 south as Mentone. It was certainly a cold, probably a dry period. 



The President (Mr. Gr. W. Lamplugh) desired to express the 

 satisfaction with which the paper would be received by all students 

 of our Pleistocene deposits, as a sign that the re- examination of 

 these difficult beds in a critical area had been undertaken by the 

 Author. It was comparatively easy to frame an idea of the course 

 of events during the period in our eastern and western coastal belts, 

 but the s} r nchronous conditions in the Midland area were evidently 

 much more complex and variable, and the evidence required much 

 further investigation. In this region it is believed that the invasion 

 of the ice was a comparatively short event and was probably not 

 simultaneous over the whole area. Many of the gravels and other 

 drainage phenomena bore testimony to abnormal conditions during 

 Late Glacial times, brought about by the floods of thaw- water poured 

 across the area from both sides, in addition to its local drainage. 

 The speaker agreed that the level at which the gravels were found 

 ■did not afford conclusive evidence as to relative age. He thought, 

 also, that some of the peculiarities of the fauna and flora might be 

 due to the co-existence in the neighbourhood of tenants of areas 

 which, having escaped actual glaciation, differed widely from those 

 that alone had been able to establish themselves on the desolated 

 tracts of cold clay and gravel left by the retreating ice. But, as 

 the Author had confined himself so strictly in this paper to the 

 statement of facts, it was perhaps premature at present to discuss 

 their interpretation. 



The Author thought that the deposit mentioned by Sir William 

 Boyd Hawkins was one which Prof. Hughes had found close to 

 Newmarket Station. His own paper dealt strictly with a tract 

 •covering a radius of about 2 miles from Cambridge : here no 

 Boulder- Clay occurred, and he had abstained from treating of the 

 relationship of the Pleistocene gravels to the Boulder- Clay, though 

 he proposed to discuss their relations elsewhere. He would, however, 

 call attention to the existence of large boulders derived from the 

 Boulder-Clay, which were found in the gravels of the Traveller's 

 Best. 



His paper dealt especially with the question of palaeontological 

 sequence. 



[June 17th, 1920.] 



