170 REV. THOMAS BROWN ON THE OLD RIVER TERRACES 



If this be so, it would appear that the glacial epoch must, to a great extent 

 at least, have passed away. Its close had been marked by the formation of 

 the kames, those ridges of gravel whose strange forms meet us on our 

 uplands and over the face of the country. Then there came a more genial 

 time, shown by the large size of the hazel nuts, when the present Flora was 

 established. And then it was that those vast floods seem to have flowed forth, 

 which filled our valleys, and left their record in these highest terraces. What 

 was done during the Moray floods may have been clone of old on a still greater 

 scale, and these high-lying deposits may be the proof of it. 



Antiquity of Man. 



The views thus far stated must be judged of on their own merits, apart from 

 any question as to the antiquity of man. The advocates of extreme opinions 

 on this subject have relied to a great extent on geological evidence, and some 

 of their strongest arguments have been derived from the flint implements of the 

 Somme in France, and the Brixham Cave in Devonshire. It is held that 

 wrought weapons, the work of man, are found along with the remains of extinct 

 mammalia, and occur in such a way as to show that man had been their co- 

 temporary. If this were all, however, the argument would have little force, for 

 the inference would be perfectly open, either that the human period must be 

 carried further back, or that the time of these extinct mammalia must be 

 brought further down. Were we mistaken as to the duration of man — must 

 it be carried much further back among these extinct animals ? or were we 

 mistaken about these extinct animals — do they come down into the human 

 period ? Men would lean to one or other alternative according to their pre- 

 possessions. Other circumstances had therefore to be appealed to, and, in fact, 

 the stress of the argument has come to rest on the position of the deposits in 

 which these remains occur. Those on the Somme were examined by one of 

 our best observers, Mr Prestwich, who reports that the oldest beds containing 

 these fossils lie along the valley, at the height of about 80 feet above the river 

 course. The time when these were deposited was the time when man and 

 the mammoth lived together. Since then the river has worn down the valley, 

 cutting through rock, &c. some 80 feet, and the human period must be carried 

 back through the ages which can rationally be supposed needful for this opera- 

 tion. He refuses to admit " hundreds of thousands of years," but if his view 

 be taken, the period must be very long. The argument in the case of the 

 Brixham cave is similar. The remains of human art and of these extinct 

 animals are found together in a deposit which must have been carried by 

 running water into its present position. But the entrance to the cave is in the 



associated as to form properly one deposit. At whatever time the one was formed, the other was also. 

 The conclusion to which all the evidence seems to point is, that the whole system of these river 

 terraces was formed at the time when the land was elevated above its present level. 



