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glaciation about which we have been speaking, we have as yet no 

 clear evidence that man then lived near Bournemouth. 



After this period of intense cold came a time when the climate 

 was mild, and southern animals and plants returned to England. 

 We have founcl on our south coast in some of the deposits such 

 southern plants as the Montpellier maple and Cotoneaster 

 pyracantha. This interglacial period saw a considerable variation 

 in the sea-level, the sea at one time rising about T40 feet above 

 its present level, as is evidenced by the raised beach in Goodwood 

 Park and by the deeper-water shell beds of Selsey. Then the sea 

 gradually sank to its former level, and there were laid down 

 deposits of estuarine and fluviatile origin along the course of the 

 Solent River and in the Selsey peninsula. It is in these later 

 deposits that the southern plants have been found, but southern 

 marine mollusca are abundant in the underlying marine deposits. 



Unfortunately no fossils belonging to this interglacial period 

 have yet been found near Bournemouth, though some of the flint 

 implements probably belong to it. 



After the formation of the estuarine deposits there seems to 

 have been a submergence of a few feet, and the overlying beds of 

 beach-shingle were formed, as well as the low-lying raised-beach 

 at Brighton. Thus far I have been unable myself to find any trace 

 of man in these fossiliferous interglacial beds ; here, however, 

 probably belongs the strange extinct type of human skull, 

 discovered by Mr. Dawson, at Piltdown, and named by Dr. Smith 

 Woodward Eoanthropus dawsoni. I do not know where else the 

 deposits in which it is found can be placed. 



Perhaps we shall make similar discoveries near Bournemouth 

 in one of the terrace-gravels that help to make up the enormous 

 sheet which covers the plateaus. We have, however, here two 

 difficulties to contend with. Our gravels are mainly decalcified ; 

 that is to say, percolating rain-water has dissolved all lime and 

 has consequently destroyed any fossil bones that may have been in 

 the gravel. And, secondly, such enormous quantities of flint 

 gravel have been swept down from the chalk hills lying to the north 

 and west, that it becomes difficult to find implements in deposits 

 formed when men were few. 



At present we do not quite know what happened in the Solent 

 River during the period of greatest submergence. The sea may 

 have extended far beyond Bournemouth into Dorset ; or more 

 probably the valley floor was not then cut sufficiently low to 

 enable the sea to run far inland. This is one of the difficult 

 questions that we still have to solve; at present we cannot point 

 to any decisive evidence either way. 



You may say that it ought to be quite easy to trace the raised 

 beaches of Goodwood and Portsdown, Bembridge and Portland 

 into the Solent Estuary. But after several years' work at the 

 field geology I could not satisfactorily do so. The difficulty is this : 

 At that period, as now, the prevalent wind seems to have been 

 SW., and shingle beaches were formed in all exposed places. But 



