British Association. 301 
were of the greatest importance in reasoning with regard to the antiquity 
of mankind, and at the same time of suggesting a mode of consideration 
which he hoped could be followed up. The district on the coast of Norfolk, 
where the cliffs belong to the glacial, postglacial, and preglacial periods, 
bad become famous owing to the investigations of Mr Taylor a few years 
ago. Some thirty years ago in Yorkshire, below the boulder clay, there 
was found a quantity of flint and chalk gravel which contained the bones 
of elephants, horses, and other creatures. Soon afterwards he became 
acquainted with this similar discovery in Norfolk. Having described 
these deposits, the Professor said he was inclined to think they must not 
venture to apply to this country any argument drawn from Scandinavia. 
They must have each country studied for itself, and then they might 
possibly arrive at a satisfactory conclusion. It was far better to take 
each class of glacial deposits by itself. He thought it possible to account 
for these deposits by the introduction of the tide at different levels, and 
that it was not at all necessary to suppose that the coast had been dis- 
turbed in order to account for the level of the marine shells. He was 
inclined to think that all those strata were to be put together as the 
deposit of one period ; and he thought Norwich Crag was too local a 
name to apply to so remarkable a set of deposits. 
“On the Alluvial Accumulations in the Valleys of the Somme and 
Ouse.” By Mr R. A. Gopwin-Avsten. 
Sir C, Lyett said he had expected to hear Professor Phillips and Mr 
Godwin-Austen express a wider divergence from his own conclusions 
than they had done. He took it for granted that Professor Phillips 
agreed with him in the important point, that not only the flint implements 
which he mentioned in the case of St Acheul were of the same age as the 
old river gravel, but also the extinct mammalia. It therefore appeared 
that they agreed in the important point of the co-existence of man with 
those extinct animals, The new view which he had attempted to explain 
was, that the upper valley gravel, some 80 or 100 feet above the level of 
the sea, was not now in the position it was when the river flowed there 
and formed this extensive deposit of sand and gravel. If he understood 
the argument, there was such a slope of the gravel covered with loam 
towards the Somme as there would not be if it was the deposit of a con- 
siderable river in its original state; in that case the slope would be the 
other way, from the river towards the bluffs, as in the case of the Rhine 
and the Mississippi. He was not prepared to say whether it was possible 
to calculate on the identity of the present state of that surface with what 
it was at the very remote period when it was formed, and since which it 
must have had so many washes by rain during many thousand years. 
He was not prepared to say whether they could reason in that manner as 
to a change of position. What he said was, that there was nothing in 
his speculations on the river gravels hostile to the conclusions which 
Professor Phillips had proposed, of there having been possible local move- 
ments, or, at any rate, a considerable movement of that country since the 
old river flowed. He thought it was almost impossible that that should 
not be the case. Indeed, when he found two levels of river gravel, one 
higher and the other lower, it generally appeared to him that that must 
be in consequence of some great movement, that there must have been 
probably some stationary period, when great accumulations took place, 
and that there must have been a period of movement, the waters eroding 
and cutting away the country, until they settled down at a lower level, 
and there was a formation of gravel there. This was a most probable 
thing; but they must bear in mind that thongh they talked of these 
NEW SERIES.—VOL. XVIII. NO. 11.—ocToBER 1863. 2Q 
