150 
DR. HICKS—PRE-HISTORIC MAH IN BRITAIN. 
Yalley the brick-earth is found occupying apparently the position 
of the highest boulder-clay in the other areas. Similar conditions 
are to be witnessed in the valleys and plateaux of the adjoining 
counties. In Hertfordshire, glacial deposits are spread out over 
extensive areas, and in the main they resemble those which occur 
in Middlesex. Some, however, have supposed that the pebble- 
gravels of the higher plains should be classed as of Pre-glacial 
age, whilst others consider them as of Middle-glacial age, and 
think that they should be correlated with the subangular gravel and 
sand of the lower plain. Prom an examination which I have made 
of some of these higher gravels, I am inclined to think that they 
must have been deposited at an early time in the Glacial period, 
and that their somewhat peculiar character may be accounted for 
by their having been mainly derived, like the lower deposits in 
Middlesex, from certain Tertiary beds, such as the Bagshot Sands. 
If it can be proved that the high-level gravels in the Thames 
Yalley are to be correlated with the glacial deposits at Hendon and 
Pinchley, it is clear that the gravels near Hertford mentioned by 
Prof. Hughes'* as containing bones of some Pleistocene Mammalia, 
viz. horse, ox, reindeer, mammoth, and rhinoceros, must also be 
considered as of Glacial age. 
Several implements were obtained by some friends and myself in 
caverns in the Yale of Clwyd, North Wales, during explorations 
carried on there in the years 1884-87. Much interest is attached 
to one of the flakes, as it was obtained under deposits of undoubted 
Glacial age outside a covered entrance to the cavern in association 
with bones of the mammoth, hyaena, rhinoceros, and reindeer. It 
seems to have been used as a scraper, and resembles some which 
have been found in Kent’s Cavern and elsewhere in association 
with the oldest Pleistocene fauna.. Its position under a great thick¬ 
ness of undisturbed glacial deposits shows that man undoubtedly 
occupied that area before the latter were accumulated, and there is 
ample evidence to show that these beds are to be correlated with the 
recognised glacial deposits in many other areas in England and 
Wales. We found several flint implements, in association with a 
similar fauna, in the deposits within the caverns, and the con¬ 
clusions which we arrived at were that they belonged also to the 
same period. The caverns appear to have been occupied by the 
animals named and by man either before or during the earlier 
stages of the Glacial period, and to have been subsequently covered 
over by marine deposits and boulder-clay. The implements found 
in the caverns, as also those of the Thames-Yalley gravel, closely 
resemble those made use of by some of the uncivilised races of the 
present day. So nearly identical are some of the implements used 
by the Esquimaux at the present time with those of the Palaeolithic 
period that it has been suggested by Prof. Boyd Dawkins that the 
Esquimaux may be the direct descendants of Palaeolithic man. 
The two periods of the Stone age are also distinguished by the 
animals which were associated with man. 
* ‘ Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc.,’ vol. xxiv, p. 283 (1868). 
