Man and the Pleistocene Mammals of Great Britain. 201 



MAN AND THE PLEISTOCENE MAMMALS OF 

 GREAT BRITAIN* 



(Eead at the Congres Paleoethnologique.) 

 BY W. BOYD DAWKINS_, M.A., E.R.S., MEMB. CORRBSP. 



The remains of man have been found in various paints of Great 

 Britain, associated with the remains of many of the post- 

 glacial group of mammals, both in bone caverns and in river 

 deposits. The implements found in the latter are precisely of 

 the same character as those from the banks of the Somme, 

 while, on the other hand, those in the caverns are smaller, and 

 approach nearer to those found in the cave of Moustier than 

 to any others. We will first examine the mammals proved to 

 have coexisted with man during the time that ancient gravel 

 and loam beds were being swept down by rivers that now 

 flow at a lower level. 



* 4 So far back as the year 1715,f a spear-head of flint was 

 discovered, along with the remains of a mammoth, in the 

 gravel of the Thames, near Gray's Inn Lane, in London, and 

 is preserved in the British Museum. No particular notice was 

 taken of this discovery until the year 1860. At the end of 

 the last century, implements of a similar kind were found at 

 Hoxne, in Suffolk, J and from that time down to the present 

 numerous traces of man have been found in the same layer, along 

 with the remains of mammoth, deer, and horse. Until, however, 

 the discoveries of M. Boucher de Perthes called the attention 

 of English savants to the existence of man in the post-glacial 

 epoch, no notice was taken of the earliest known implements 

 that man left behind him in the gravel. In the year 1861,§ 

 Mr. Wyatt found, along with the remains of man, in the 

 gravels of Bedford, the cave bear, bison, stag, reindeer, 

 Elejphas antiauus, hippopotamus major, and tichorhine rhi- 

 noceros. Among the fluviatile shells was a fresh-water mussel, 

 extinct now in Britain, Unio Batavus, but which still lives in 

 the Oise. The remains found by Dr. Blackmore at Salisbury, 

 and described by Mr. Evans in his paper on flint implements 

 in 1864,|| were not derived from the same bed as the imple- 

 ments, but from one of a different character occurring at a 

 lower level. They cannot, therefore, be cited as proving the 

 coexistence of man with the extinct mammalia in Wiltshire. 



* The French title of this paper was, " Sur les Mammiferes Pleistocenes 

 Trouves avec L'Homme dans la Gbancle-Bretagne." 



f " Archseologia," 1860-2. % "Archseologia," 1800. 



§ " Quart. Greol. Journ.," vols. xix. xx. || Quart. Geol. Journ.," vol. xx. 



