REV. D. GATH WHITLEY, PRIMEVAL MAN IN BELGIUM. 43 
cannot agree with the author in supposing that at the Quaternary 
Period “a tremendous flood swept over Northern Europe, hy which 
Man and the great mammalia then living were overwhelmed and 
swept away.” The drowning of wild animals in rivers or lakes is 
quite an ordinary event in nature. 
Rev. A. Irving, B. A., D.Sc. — I am sure we all thank the Rev. D. 
Gath W hitley for the able and comprehensive manner in which he 
has presented a summary of recent researches on Primeval Man in 
Belgium during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The most 
valuable parts of the paper are, to my mind, those descriptive of the 
bone-caves and the cave-men, with comparisons drawn between 
some of the cave-men and the modern Eskimo, and between others 
and the Australian aborigines. In the former case it seems likely 
that human beings of such a type may have existed in Belgium and 
Northern France at the time even of the extreme glaciation of 
Northern Europe, when the southern limit of the great inland ice- 
spread appears to have been along a line roughly drawn through the 
mouth of the Thames, the mouth of the Rhine and Westphalia. A 
difficulty presents itself in the appearance of remains of great beasts 
of warmer regions along with those of the reindeer and other 
animals of high northern latitudes. It would almost appear that 
such an intermingling of a northern and southern fauna might 
be accounted for by the former animals being driven southwards by 
the advancing ice of the earlier Quaternary Period and mingled with 
such of those, now confined to warmer latitudes, as were able to 
adapt themselves to new conditions and so survived the increased 
severity of the climate. The thick hairy covering of the Siberian 
mammoth is a case in point. 
In his able paper, Mr. Whitley has compared the results obtained 
by the Belgian explorers with those obtained by others in the South 
of France and in England. He would have added to the interest 
and value of his paper, had he extended that comparison a little to 
those obtained by German explorers, such as the Lindental Caverns 
near Gera, the Hohlefels of Achtal in Swabia (explored by O. Fraas), 
the Riiubershbhle near Regensburg (explored by Zittel and von 
Dechen), not to mention others. 
It may be of some interest to the members of the Institute to 
compare the results presented by Mr. Whitley with the following 
extract from the latest edition (1906) of Credner’s Elemmte der 
