130 prof, w. boyd dawkins on a pliocene [may i903, 



Discussion. 



Dr. Forsyth Major agreed with the Author that the mammalia 

 were of Upper Pliocene age, and also that the finding of mammalia 

 of this geological horizon in a cave was, up to the present, quite an 

 unique occurrence, although other supposed instances had been 

 mentioned, as, for example, the Macacus suevicus, which was found 

 in a cave of the Schwabische Alb. However, the association of a 

 monkey with the reindeer and other Arctic mammalia need not be 

 a matter of surprise, since there were other instances of monkeys 

 having been found in Pleistocene deposits, namely, the Macacus 

 pliocamus from the brickearth of Grays (Essex), and another 

 species in caves of Southern France, and since some species of 

 Old-World monkeys (Semnopithecus, Macacus, Titer opithecus, Colobus) 

 were known to live at heights of 10,000 to over 13,000 feet. 



It had been repeatedly asserted that the mammalian remains 

 from the breccias and caves of Sardinia and Corsica were of Tertiary 

 age ; if this were so, there would be no Pleistocene mammals at 

 all in those islands. As a matter of fact, most of these fossils were 

 more nearly related to Continental Pliocene and Miocene mammals 

 than to members of the Pleistocene European fauna ; the explanation 

 of this relation was that the former connections between the islands 

 and the continent — during part or the whole of the Tertiary Era — 

 must have been severed before, or at the beginning of Pleistocene 

 times. It was quite possible that mammals of Eocene, Oligocene, 

 Miocene, and Pliocene ages found in rock-fissures, might in many 

 cases have been deposited originally in a cave. 



The association of Mastodon arvernensis with Eleplias meridionalis 

 was an undoubted, although by no means a frequent, occurrence in 

 the Val d'Arno. The difference in the structure of their molars 

 was proof of a difference in their diet, and this accounted for their 

 not being as a rule found associated together. 



Prof. Seeley said that, while the occurrence of Mastodon 

 arvernensis in a cavern was a new fact of first-rate importance 

 in Tertiary geology, the evidence for the occurrence of Eleplias 

 meridionalis was such that the tooth might perhaps pertain to 

 E. primigenius. Machairodus was a fossil of Pleistocene caverns. 

 The difference of this fauna from that of newer caverns was coloured 

 by the presence of the Crag fossil Mastodon arvernensis ; yet that 

 species might well have lived to a later time in the high land of 

 Derbyshire. The remains were in part rolled, broken, and 

 manifestly transported by water ; so that it might be that the living 

 animals had neither been carried by floods, nor fallen through 

 the roof, but had been derived from a local deposit, which was 

 removed in the denudation associated with the Glacial Period. 

 While the fauna of this cave was quite unlike that of newer caverns, 

 the evidence for the Pliocene age of the deposit was not so certain 

 as was to be desired in establishing a new truth. 



Mr. E. T. Newton saw no reason for doubting the Pliocene age 

 of the series of mammalian remains. Our surprise was not so much 



