538 
THE GEOLOGIST. 
In Mr. J. G. 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 Eamsxy, 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 tliere 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 that 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 vitulina, from the brick- 
earth at Springfield, near Stratheden, in P'ifeshire, 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 Lanarkshire these strata seem to cap and form 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-Uevonian. Since the Glasgow meeting he 
bad added several new forms to the fossil fauna of the Lanarkshire beds, but no 
vegetable remains had as yet beiu detected in them. These new forms 
