1893.] 



Submergence of Western Europe, §c. 



89 



The facts, on the other hand, show that all the phases of the Rubble- 

 drift are such as may be due to the agency of a common cause. 

 Briefly, whether it be the head over the raised beaches, the osseous 

 breccia on slopes, or the ossiferous fissures, they all present a complete 

 absence of that wear which must result from river, sea, or ice action ; 

 all the materials are of local origin, while all the faunal remains of 

 these, and of one section of the loess, are such as might come from the 

 wreck of a land surface, and a land surface only. The bones of the 

 animals have evidently been subjected to considerable but not lasting 

 violence, for they are broken and splintered, yet not worn ; and though 

 these remains are associated together in as it were a common grave, 

 it is impossible to suppose that under the ordinary conditions of 

 animal existence, such dissimilar orders could have been associated 

 in life, nor, as the bones are free from all traces of gnawing, could 

 those remains have been collected and left by beasts of prey. These 

 concurrent conditions, together with the mode of distribution of the 

 Rubble-drift from many independent centres, seem to the author — 

 howsoever startling may be the conclusion — to be only explicable 

 upon the hypothesis of a wide-spread and short submergence. 



Another consequence the author draws from the position of the 

 Rubble-drift, and one that confirms a conclusion which he had drawn 

 from very different data, is that it affords grounds to believe that in 

 estimating the time elapsed since the so-called Post- Glacial Period, 

 instead of a measure of 80,000 to 100,000 years, one of 10,000 to 

 12,000 years would be a closer approximation. For it will have been 

 observed that, where present, only a few feet of that peculiar drift 

 separates the deposits of Quaternary Age from those of the newer 

 Stone or Neolithic Age, and that nowhere have there been found 

 between the two any sedimentary beds representing the work of any 

 long period of time. Further, the surface configuration has remained 

 since then comparatively unaltered. 



Nevertheless, the author is fully alive to the difficulties attendant 

 upon the hypothesis he ventures to put forward. Some of these con- 

 cern naturalists rather than geologists, and the opportunity for their 

 discussion has not hitherto arisen. He invites younger geologists to 

 follow up the enquiry, and submits that, so far as the actual phe- 

 nomena are concerned, the hypothesis satisfies, on the whole, all the 

 more important conditions of the problem. 



