90 
conditions, down to the confines of history. But as appa- 
rently no great thickness of matter was accumulating they are 
mixed up together at the surface. 
The reindeer gives us evidence of a cold climate, and we 
have here no animals which can be assigned to tropical con- 
ditions. The reindeer lived in the district subsequently to the 
waning of the ice- sheet ; we have no evidence to say whether 
it lived there during the cold times preceding its full develop- 
ment, though that seems probable. 
The great thickness of talus, 20 feet and upwards in 
depth, is the only record of the long time which has elapsed 
since the boulders on which it lies were left by the ice- sheet. 
There is no evidence throughout it of any change in condi- 
tions from subaerial to marine or fluviatile. But we Imow 
that in Lancashire, not far off, we have old sea bottoms rest- 
ing upon the ice-sheet rubbish, and indicating a submergence 
to the extent of some six or seven hundred feet perhaps. The 
absolute depth is somewhat uncertain, but it appears here not 
to have reached the cave, and there is a marked absence of 
such deposits at like elevations in the district. Still this 
was one of the changes which was long subsequent to 
the first appearance of man in this country, as shown 
in the cave's records. As similar evidences of a sub- 
mergence late in the glacial period have been observed 
over large areas in the Old and the New World, and in both 
hemispheres, in mean latitudes, it may be that the traditions 
so common to many races and religions of a great deluge, are 
but lingering memories of this great event. It matters not 
that these myths all differ in their surroundings. The central 
core still has the solid ring of truth, albeit masked and dis- 
figured by the rust of time. 
