538 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



In Mr. J. Gr. Marshall's paper, an explanation of some geological phenomena of 

 the lake district was attempted, on the supposition of these being due to metamor- 

 phic instead of igneous action. 



The communications of Mr. W. Pengelly and Professor Ramsay, on the ossiferous 

 cavern at Brixham, in Devonshire, gave an indication of what we may expect when 

 the details of the cave shall be fully worked out. The operations there being carried 

 on are under the auspices and direction of the Royal and Geological Societies, with 

 the special object of determining, with the greatest possible exactitude, the mode 

 of deposition, and the contents of the various successive deposits forming the floor 

 of this cavern. 



In the paper read by Mr. Pengelly the structure and formation of the cavern 

 were described, and it was stated that upwards of 2,000 mammalian bones had 

 already been exhumed, amongst which were mingled flint knives and other objects, 

 evidently the work of a primitive race of men. 



M. Boucher de Perthes, of Abbeville, the well-known French antiquary, 

 several years ago pointed out the existence of flint weapons and other such arti- 

 ficial objects in the gravel drifts around that town, and with admirable perseve- 

 rance that gentleman has accumulated, from various and distant localities, a mag- 

 nificent -suite of these objects, to the account of which, given in his lucid essay, 

 we shall shortly draw fuller attention. 



For many years past, too, we have had accounts of human remains, from gravel 

 and other deposits, which have been too commonly regarded as apochryphal, or as 

 the result of a careless commingling of the contents of proximate strata of very 

 different ages. 



On a question so important as the establishment of the first date of the existence 

 of our race upon this planet, it is not right that the evidence should be open to 

 even the shadow of imputation, and it is a matter of congratulation for all friends 

 and votaries of our science, that the excavation of such an excellent example, as 

 the Brixham cave really is, should have been undertaken by the Geological Society 

 of London, and that, consequently, all the evidence in this instance will rest on 

 no obscure foundation. 



In Professor Ramsay's communication, it was stated j:hat Dr. Falconer had 

 already determined amongst the ossiferous remains of the Brixham cave the bones 

 of an extinct rhinoceros, bos, horse, rein-deer, cave-bear, and hysena. 



Mr. David Page gave an account of a skeleton of a seal, of a widely-diverging 

 variety (if not a distinct species) from the common Phoca viiulina, from the brick- 

 earth at Springfield, near Stratheden, in Fifeshire, nine miles distant from St. 

 Andrew's Bay, and five beyond the tidal influence of the estuary of the Eden. 

 This pleistocene clay attains an elevation of 120 to 150 feet above the sea ; and in 

 the valley of the Eden are most marked traces of ancient sea-levels at 20, 40, 60, 

 90, 120, and 200 feet above the present level of the sea. Shells such as now 

 exist on the neighbouring shores are met with at the lowest of these levels, beneath 

 which there is still a submerged forest of oak, birch, hazel, alder, and other in- 

 digenous trees. 



These remains of a seal were found in a bright red plastic clay, devoid of pebbles, 

 or boulders, and evidently derived from the waste of the Old Red Sandstone of Upper 

 Stratheden. It appears to have been a slow and quiescent deposit in comparatively 

 deep water, and rests on a great thickness of dark blue tenaceous " boulder-clay," 

 replete with boulders of syenite, granite, gneiss, greenstone, quartz, &c., and, from the 

 disposition of the associated gravels and clays, it is evidently at least as old as the 

 ancient 150 feet sea-level, and far older than those deposits in the Forth, Clyde, 

 and Tay, which have yielded boreal shells, and remains of whales, deer, bos, &c. 



In his "' Further Contributions to the Paleontology of the ' Tilestones ' of Scot- 

 land," Mr. Page observes that in Lanark?^hire these strata seem to cap and foi-m a 

 portion of the Upper Silurian Series, while the Forfarshire flagstones constitute 

 the basis of the Old Red Sandstone ; hence, with a view to avoid present discussion, 

 he classed the whole group as Silurio-Devonian. Since the Glasgow meeting he 

 had added several new forms to the fossil fauna of the Lanarkshire beds, but no 

 vegetable remains had as yet let n detected in them. These new forms 



