58 
horizontally which would have been the case had they been the result of 
deposit in a wide expanse of river, nor following any line suggested by 
P °5f P r"i:o-in several instances, that inageneral s^e the^vek 
were dependent on the chalk contours, but presented also the kind ot 
inequaMes which would arise from subadrial action. The surface materials 
seemed to hive fallen, shpped. or drifted into lower levels, and ammged 
themselves partly according to their relative gravities, partly, as said before, 
ac"- to the ground on which they fell or over which they passed. And 
finallythe varied action of wind drifting the surface sand and loam, of ram 
washinff and separating lighter materials, and the possibly far more effective 
“of the melting snows, in loosening, shifting, and the 
previously formed gravel— all those causes, coupled with the fact that they 
wire no doubt intermittent, and acting only at perhaps long and nreg^r 
intervals, were necessary to be taken into account m 
various phenomena which were seen in the details of the saatl ? the mffiute 
then, in the consideration of the general phenomena, nor m the mmute 
details were there any circumstances which su ggested riven “ 4l0n ’ °“ “ 
contrary, they militated against it, and suggested subaerial action, But ™ 
beinv so the very basis of Sir Charles Lyell’s computation of enormous trne 
was cut away. It was made to depend upon the slow action of the river 
cutting through an enormous chalk plateau, and carryiiig down 
milli ons of tons of chalk and other material, and all this ^rfore a peat 
formation commenced, which took 33,000 years. It was not his .objectto 
argue how long those beds might have been m formation under subaenal 
action or how short a time was sufficient ; the many accidents arising from 
the combination of the varied circumstances alre: a d > T ' i t e ^Ibiect had been 
argument as to measure of time very uncertain ; but what his object had be^ 
was to show that the computation put forth by Sir Charles Lyell, an 
followed by so many others, was based upon utterly false premises. 
Mr. Parker, before concluding, drew attention to a large collection of Am 
implements derived from the St. Acheul beds, chiefly from his own cabinet, 
but supplemented by others, by St. Sharp, Esq., F.^S. ^^ptonmnte 
from other places, and from bone caves, turbaries, British burial-mounds, 
&c., &c., for the sake of comparison. . . . 
He pointed out that if rudeness was a criterion of immense 
several of those from the British graves at Bnghthampton, near Oxford, 
found with characteristic British pottery, must be put long a ^ eri “ “ ^ te 
the St. Acheul implements, which were of a more developed type , in act, , th 
very perfection of the St. Acheul implements, while it told, on the one hand 
with overwhelming force in favour of their being the work of man, at the 
same time militated against the enormous antiquity ascribed to them, unless 
wThnaffined man to have been wholly stationary, if not even retrogressive m 
the art of fabrication of his necessary implements of domestic and aggressive 
' '*The President (Professor Rollestone) said that as every part of the world 
was now shown to have had a flint period, it bore on the interesting , anthro- 
pological question whether man rose from a savage state, or whether the 
present savage was a degradation from a higher state. 
