352 
PRESIDENTS ADDRESS. 
Great Post-Glacial Flood, akin to that which for something like a 
century hindered the progress of geology. He believes (so he says) 
in the early Fathers and Grandfathers of Geology, and quotes 
many honoured names in support of his views “ that the Drift, as 
we find it, was very largely distributed by water and not by ice.” 
It has been said that “by a judicious selection of facts you can 
prove anything : ” but I would not venture to find fault with Sir 
Flenry Howorth if he quoted facts only in support of his views. 
Surely his conclusions can gain but little strength from the opinions 
of the geologists of old, for it may fairly be questioned if any one 
of them would have been of the same opinion still had he lived to 
the present day. 
Sir Henry treats the glacial deposits in far too comprehensive 
a way — as if there were one great torrential deposit of Boulder 
Clay, gravel, &c. The evidence that has been gathered in the 
east of England points to two, if not three, stages of glaciation, 
which directly affected larger and smaller areas. We recognise in 
Norfolk a general distinction in age between the Cromer Till and 
Contorted Drift (taken together), and the great sheet of Chalky 
Boulder Clay that spreads over the eastern and midland counties. 
The beds below the Chalky Boulder Clay are in many places 
markedly disturbed — conspicuously so in the case of the Contorted 
Drift ; but any beds, be they Lias Clays (as in Northamptonshire), 
Chalk, Norwich Crag, or older glacial accumulations, locally tell 
of the action of ice by their frequently disturbed condition, where 
under this Chalky Boulder Clay. 
Into this subject of the action of ice I do not intend further to 
enter, as I wish to refer more particularly to the age of the 
Mammoth. 
It is hardly necessary in Norfolk to insist on the fact that 
everything beneath Boulder Clay is not pre-glacial in the strict sense 
of the term : yet many misconceptions have arisen on this matter. 
Dr. Hicks has obtained remains of Mammoth and other 
Pleistocene Mammalia from beds older than Boulder Clay in the 
Vale of Clwyd ; but the assemblage is not that of our Cromer 
Forest Bed, and the remains cannot be considered as pre-glacial. 
