THE PLEISTOCENE PERIOD IN GUERNSEY. 



READ AT THE NOVEMBER MEETING OF THE GUERNSEY SOCIETY 

 OF NATURAL SCIENCE AND LOCAL RESEARCH. 



BY MR. A. COLLENETTE, F.C.S., VICE-PRESIDENT. 

 (Curator of the Guille-Alles Museum.) 



INTRODUCTION. 



This paper is an attempt to place the superficial deposits of 

 the island in orderly sequence, and to correlate them with 

 their equivalents in the other islands and on the coasts of the 

 English Channel. 



As far as Guernsey is concerned, I am convinced that 

 these deposits all belong to the period under review, for only 

 in the case of flints (which denote previous deposits of chalk 

 with flints) have I detected any earlier. 



An advance copy of this paper has been read by several 

 members of the Jersey Society, and I have been favoured 

 with evidences of agreements and differences which I shall 

 introduce in their order, and thus show the weight to be 

 attached to my own conclusions. 



As the chalk deposits are of no use to my argument 

 except in so far as they are a source of flints which were 

 utilised by early Paleolithic men who inhabited these islands, 

 I shall treat of them in this introduction only. 



I have found flints as pebbles, as flat slabs and as nodules 

 practically all over the island, but especially in the old beaches. 

 They are also met with in the clay deposits at all elevations, 

 and I look upon these as having been left on our areas after 

 the chalk had been eroded away. 



The presence of slabs and nodules, which evidently have 

 been formed by the deposit of gelatinous silica penetrating 

 into chalk cracks and spaces in chalk above the elevation of 

 the sea. 



Our Jersey fellow-w 7 orkers, however, are not of this 

 opinion, believing that in Jersey the flints are only found on 

 the lower beaches and that they are sporadic in origin. While 

 in Jersey, during the recent visit of our Society, I paid 

 attention to the question of the occurrence of flints at high 



