17:3 
A break, you will observe, in the continuity of mammalian 
life in Scotland. 
12. England, Ireland, and Wales afford similar evidence. 
Professor Phillips has traced erratics from Cumberland over 
a large part of Yorkshire, extending to a height of 1,500 feet 
above the sea. At Macclesfield I examined a boulder which 
had travelled from the same district of Cumberland. It had 
crossed Westmoreland and Lancashire, a distance of nearly 
150 miles, and to remove it to the People^s Park in Maccles- 
field, from the field where the ice had left it, eighteen strong 
horses were required. Professor Ramsey says * that the greater 
part of the low-lying land of Great Britain and Ireland was, at 
that time, buried in and moulded by glacial ice, till at length a 
slow submersion of the land took place. And it will be remem- 
bered that the Duke of Argyle, in writing to this Institute upon 
a paper read by Professor McKenny Hughes, of Cambridge, 
expressed the wish that the attention of geologists might be 
drawn more particularly to the admitted fact of sea-gravels at 
a high elevation on our Welsh and Scottish mountains. And 
amongst other observations made by his Grace was this, that 
it was his belief that a submergence under the sea, to the 
extent of 2,000 feet, had been one of the latest of geological 
changes, and that during this submergence glacial conditions 
prevailed over a large part of what is now Europe. The 
expressed wish of the Duke of Argyle was met by Professor 
Hughes, who, in the following year, 1880, read before this 
Institute a valuable paper upon The Evidences of the later 
Movements of Elevation and Depression in the British Isles,^-’ 
and adduced evidence from Trimmer, Darby shire, Lyell, and 
others, of marine deposits in Wales at heights varying from 
1,370 to 1,800 feet, making it clear that the submergence was 
approximately what his Grace supposed. At 1,250 feet above 
the sea. Professor Prestwich found similar deposits at Maccles- 
field ; and at 1,200 feet above the sea marine drift of the 
Glacial period rests upon the hills of Wexford. If, then, the 
submergence spoken of by Professor Ramsey, was to the 
extent referred to in the above evidence, must I not say of 
Wales, England, and Ireland,;what Professor Jamieson said 
of Scotland, — that the present flora and fauna date from the 
Drift period ? Are not the conditions such as to make it 
probable that there would be a break in the continuity of 
mammalian life in the British Isles ? 
13. Dr. Page, author of the text books on geology referring 
* Popular Encyclopaedia, article “ Geology.’ 
