Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/174

146 trunk decays the hard resinous knots stand out in relief, and taper to a point as they approach the central pith of the tree, in the same way as those at Dürnten. They are, moreover, covered superficially by fibres of the trunk crossing those of the knots at right angles, or nearly so, precisely in the same way. The fossil specimens have been proved, by microscopical examination, to be composed of the wood of the spruce. Under these circumstances I have but little doubt of their being knots out of a decayed fir-tree without marks of the handiwork of man, and I cannot look upon them as evidence of the existence of man in Switzerland in interglacial times.

We pass now to the examination of the late Pleistocene deposits in Great Britain, in which artificially chipped implements, found in considerable numbers over a wide area, testify to the presence of man in this country for a very long period of time, reserving for the next chapter the evidence on the point offered by the bone caverns.

In the late Pleistocene river beds, and in the caves, the fauna is the same, and both are referable to the same geological horizon, marked by the arctic mammals being in possession of the land, as may be seen in the following table:—