SPIRIT OF GOOD BOOKS. 



357 



brick-pit, whilst elsewhere around it rises higher. The irregular patchs of sand 

 and gravel on the top of the whole are not of local origin, but belong, I believe, 

 to the general superficial drift of the district. A portion of the freshwater 

 deposit has suffered denudation, — a denudation evidently of the date of that 

 which formed the small valley running down by Hoxne to the Waveney, and 

 connected with the general valley system of the district. 



" This Hoxne section furnishes us with an important clue to the relative age 

 of these several flint-implement bearing deposits. As far as we can now judge 

 it is clearly newer than the Boulder clay, and is probably older than some 

 portion of the superficial sands and gravels. Probably of the same age, and 

 much resembling the Hoxne deposit in many of its details, are the deposics at 

 Mundesley, Copford, Lexden, and others in the South of England. They were 

 all formed before the country had assumed exactly its present form of surface, — 

 before all its variety of hill and dale had been fashioned to their present shape. 

 Even should the exact position of the worked flints at Hoxne prove to be above 

 all the bone-bearing beds, and not in them, still they are contemporaneous with 

 an old condition of surface, and that over the whole is spread a drift concomi- 

 tant with a modification of that surface, and giving the stamp to some of the 

 present minor features of the country, is in either case a very remarkable fact." 



In his general conclusions, Mr. Prestwich states that "The flint-implements 

 occur associated with the remains of land, freshwater, and marine Testacea, of 

 species now living and most of them yet common in the same neighbourhood, 

 and also with the remains of various Mammalia, — a few species now living, but 

 more of extinct forms and further, that " the period at which their entomb- 

 ment took place was subsequent to the Boulder clay period, and to that extent 

 post-glacial ; and also that it was amongst the latest in geological time, — one 

 apparently immediately anterior to the surface assuming its present form, so 

 far as it regards some of the minor features. 



" It is true that no remains of man himself have yet been found — that is 

 still to be desired ; but if it be admitted that the flint-implements are his work, 

 the negative point becomes an argument of less value. 



" Whilst abstaining from any general hypothesis in explanation of the phe- 

 nomena, there is, however, one point to which I must refer before concluding, 

 although I cannot, at present, venture beyond a few generalities respecting it. 

 It might be supposed in assigning to man an appearance at such a period, it 

 would of necessity imply his existence during long ages beyond all exact 

 calculation ; for we have been apt to place even the latest of our geological 

 changes at a remote, and to us, unknown distance. The reasons on which such 

 a view has been held have been, mainly, — the great lapse of time considered 

 requisite for the dying out of so many species of great mammals, — the circum- 

 stance that many of the smaller valleys have been excavated since they lived, — 

 the presumed non-existence of man himself, — and the great extent of the latter 

 and more modern accumulations. But we have in this part of Europe no 

 succession of strata to record a gradual dying out of the species, but much, on 

 the contrary, which points to an abrupt end, and evidence only of relative not 

 of actual time ; while the recent valley -deposits, although often indicating con- 

 siderable age, show rates of growth which, though variable, appear on the 

 whole to have been comparatively rapid. The evidence, in fact, as it at present 

 stands, does not seem to me to necessitate the carrying of man back in past 

 time, so much so as the bringing forward of the extinct animals towards our 

 own time ; my own previous opinion, founded on an independent study of the 

 superficial drift or Pleistocene deposits, having likewise been certainly in favour 

 of the latter view. There are numerous phenomena, which I can only consider 

 as evidence of a sudden change, and of a rapid and transitory action and modi- 

 fication of the surface, at a comparatively recent geological period — a period 



