REV. D. GATH WHITLEY, PRIMEVAL MAN IN BELGIUM. 45 
paper. This suggests an explanation of the widespread distribution 
of similar detritus over both the plateaux and the shallow interven- 
ing valleys; and M. Gosselet’s problem (pp. 40, 41) would seem to 
be solved. The gravels which cap the higher hills (Mr. Whitley 
does not tell us that they contain Quaternary organic remains) may 
be much older ; and their relation to the present valleys and lower 
uplands may, by parity of reasoning, be accounted for in the same 
way as some of us have explained the occurrence of the high-level 
gravels of Tertiary age, both on the north and the south borders of 
the Tamisian area. 
Rev. J. Magens Mello, M.A., F.G.S. — I have read Mr. Whitley’s 
paper with much interest. It is one which must give rise to many 
questions on doubtful points. Although dealing with the Belgian 
area, we must necessarily connect with this both the French and 
our own amongst others. I only venture now to allude to one or 
two points. 
First, as to “ the attempt to prove the great age of the human 
race by assuming the slow formation of the Quaternary deposits,” 
I scarcely think this is what is usually relied upon, and whatever 
may be said in support of the theory of the extensive flood, pouring 
its waters over Northern Europe, and drowning the great 
mammalia and Man, and depositing over this area the great beds of 
gravel and clay, etc., which now overspread so much of the country, 
who can venture to say how long before this catastrophe Man made 
his appearance in these regions 1 neither have we any clue as to 
when such a flood occurred. It is quite possible that the late Sir 
Joseph Prestwich and others were right in attributing the close of 
the Pleistocene Age in Europe to a great depression and a consequent 
flood, after which we find a great change in the fauna ; the 
disappearance by extinction or migration of old forms, and the 
incoming of new species, and also of a new race of men ; but have 
we not clear proof also that between the Pleistocene Age and our 
own, changes were brought about in the physiography of these 
regions, so great, that they must have required the agency, not of 
passing flood, but of powerful denuding forces acting during a lengthy 
period 1 
We have to take into account not only the depression of 
the land some hundreds of feet, by which the British islands were 
severed from the Continent ; but we have also to take into con- 
