DEPARTMENT OF 



GEOLOGY and PALAEONTOLOGY. 



INTRODUCTION. 



Nearly every city has within its bounds some relics of earlier 

 times, when a more ancient people occupied the same spot. 



Thus below modern London we find various layers of 

 accumulated soil, each marked by tokens of former times. 

 In one we find the charred relics of the wooden buildings 

 which preceded the more modern brick and stone houses ; be- 

 neath this are found weapons, coins, and pottery, telling of 

 Norman and Saxon times. More than 20 feet down we come 

 upon the relic-bed of Roman London, and in some parts two 

 Roman periods have been recognised with remains of buildings 

 at different depths. At a still lower level, along the course of 

 the ancient Wall-brook, remnants of pile-dwellings have been 

 discovered, which were probably occupied by an earlier British 

 race. 



In the ancient gravels of the Thames Valley, both beneath 

 and around London, stone implements, left by a yet earlier 

 people, have been frequently met with, associated with bones 

 and teeth of the Mammoth. 



If in a similar manner we investigate those larger layers of 

 Chalk and Limestone, Sandstone, Clay, or Slate, composing the 

 Earth's crust, we not only find that they rest upon one another, 

 so that we can judge of their relative age by the order of their 

 superposition, but that, like the layers of soil below London, 

 they are often full of relics which tell of the former inhabitants 

 that lived, nourished, and died out, to be succeeded by another 

 race which have in their turn shared the same fate. 



