1876.] Deposits containing Flint Implements . 293 
This great flood occurred, according to my theory, before 
the culmination of the glacial period, and was primarily due 
to ice filling the bed of the North Atlantic as far south on 
the European side as lat. 49 0 . If the gravels in and below 
which the rude flint implements and the remains of the 
extinCt mammals are found, were thus spread out, it follows 
that they were preglacial in the sense that they lived before 
the principal glaciation of the country. 
We have seen that in the north such an excellent 
geologist as the late Prof. Phillips had arrived at this com 
elusion with regard to the age of the mammoth, the woolly 
rhinoceros, and the hippopotamus, and in the south, Mr. 
Godwin Austen, from a study of the same remains in the 
valley gravels. Diredt evidence of great value has been 
added by Mr. Tiddiman in his reports on the exploration of 
the Vidtoria Cave, at Settle. He has shown that the cave 
deposits lie beneath glacial clay and amongst the other 
remains a human fibula has been found.* In the Cefn Cave, 
in Denbighshire, Mr. Mackintosh has also determined that 
the mammalian remains lie in and below a glacial clay.t 
All the lines of enquiry thus far pursued in this paper 
point to the pre-glacial age of the remains in question, and 
some of the fadts are diredtly opposed to the post-glacial 
theory. How then is it that the great majority of geologists 
write as if it had been clearly proved that palaeolithic man 
was of post-glacial age ? Principally because it is believed 
that Prof. Prestwich has proved that at Hoxne, in Suffolk, 
the implements and bones are found in deposits distindtly 
overlying boulder clay. This is spoken of as if it were a truism 
in most general treatises on geology ;% and both in Europe 
and America the presumption is appealed to as being conclu- 
sive with regard to the age of the remains. The general 
opinion held is concisely given in the statement by Mr. John 
Evans in his Presidential Address to the Geological Society 
last year, that at Hoxne “the implement-bearing beds re- 
pose in a trough cut out in the upper glacial boulder clay, 
which itself rests on middle glacial sands and gravels. ”|| 
This opinion of the age of the Hoxne deposits is founded 
on the elaborate memoir by Prof. Prestwich, published in 
the “ Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society,” for 
* Nature, vol. ix., p. 14. Brit. Assoc. Reports for 1873, 1874, 1875. 
f Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc., vol. xxxii., p. gi. 
X Sir Charles Lyell, Antiquity of Man, p. 166. J. Geikie, Great Ice Age, 
p. 474. J. Croll, Climate and Time, p. 241. W. Boyd Dawkins, Cave 
Hunting, p. 410. Jukes’s Students’ Manual of Geology, p. 736. 
It Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc., vol. xxxi., p. 74. 
