Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/116

104 of alder in abundance, of hazel and yew, as well as by that of numerous flowering plants indicative of a temperate climate very different from that under which the bowlder clay itself was formed. Above these beds, characterized by temperate plants, comes a thick and more recent series of strata, in which leaves of the dwarf arctic willow and birch abound, and which were in all probability deposited under conditions like those of the cold regions of Siberia and North America. At a higher level and of more recent date than these—from which they are entirely distinct—are the beds containing palæolithic implements, formed in all probability under conditions not essentially different from those of the present day. However this may be, we have now conclusive evidence that the palæolithic implements are, in the eastern counties of England, of a date long posterior to that of the great chalky bowlder clay.

It may be said, and said truly, that the implements at Hoxne can not be shown to belong to the beginning rather than to some later stage of the palæolithic period. The changes, however, that have taken place at Hoxne in the surface configuration of the country prove that the beds containing the implements can not belong to the close of that period. It must, moreover, be remembered that in what are probably the earliest of the palæolithic deposits of the eastern counties, those at the highest level, near Brandon in Norfolk, where the gravels contain the largest proportion of pebbles derived from glacial beds, some of the implements themselves have been manufactured from materials not native to the spot, but brought from a distance, and derived in all probability either from the bowlder clay or from some of the beds associated with it. We must, however, take a wider view of the whole question, for it must not for a moment be supposed that there are the slightest grounds for believing that the civilization, such as it was, of the palæolithic period originated in the British Isles. We find in other countries implements so identical in form and character with British specimens that they might have been manufactured by the same hands. These occur over large areas in France under similar conditions to those that prevail in England. The same forms have been discovered in the ancient river gravels of Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Some few have been recorded from the north of Africa, and analogous types occur in considerable numbers in the south of that continent. On the banks of the Nile, many hundreds of feet above its present level, implements of the European types have been discovered; while in Somaliland, in an ancient river valley at a great elevation above the sea, Mr. Seton-Karr has collected a large number of implements formed of flint and quartzite, which, judging from their form and character, might have been dug out of the drift deposits of the