Page:Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, vol. 32.djvu/340

256 proved his presence in the Pleistocene age in Yorkshire; the caves of the south of England prove that he wandered over the plains now submerged beneath the waters of the Channel; those of Somerset, Pembroke, and Herefordshire, that he inhabited the valleys of the British Channel, the Severn, and the Wye. He is proved by M. Dupont to have hunted the reindeer and mammoth in Belgium, on the eastern side of the great valley which, during the latest stage of the Pleistocene, extended across where now exists the German ocean, and joined the eastern counties to Belgium. That savage tribes living on the chase should be found on one side only of a great valley, while the animals which they hunted were equally abundant on both, was in the highest degree improbable. We now have proof that their hunting-grounds extended as far to the west as the hills of Derbyshire—hills which in those times abounded with Bisons, Rein- deer, Horses and Woolly Rhinoceroses, and in which (as I have shown in my "Essay on the Animals found at Windy Knoll") there was a continual swinging to and fro of migratory animals as in North America. And further, we now have proof of the presence of the Palæolithic hunters close to the glaciated region to the north-west, which was probably covered with glaciers in the late Pleistocene age. We have, however, no evidence as to the relation of the contents of the Creswell Caves to the Boulder Clays.

Mr. considered the cave to be of a most interesting character. Implements of worked flints were here found in one bed lying on another in which implements of quartzite occurred, the latter being the ruder. That the implements from the lower bed were less finished than those of the upper was doubtless to a great extent due to the nature of the material of which they wore formed. Some of them resemble in character forms from the upper valley-gravels of the Somme. Almost identical specimens had been obtained, from what were apparently valley-gravels, near Toulouse. On the other hand, the implements in the upper layer resembled those of Solutré, Aurignac, and Kent's Cavern, and possibly represented a period earlier than that of La Madelaine. Amongst the specimens were some of great interest. One flake was worked off at the end in a diagonal direction, like specimens from Kent's Cavern. There was also a borer like those from La Madelaine. Some of the scrapers, however, might be taken to represent any period in the French caves subsequent to that of Le Moustier, while one "side- scraper," or "chopper," was much like those from Le Moustier. The paper was one of the greatest interest; and he hoped that it would be supplemented by further reports as the work progressed.

Prof. remarked that the superposition of the bed containing the more perfectly formed implements over that in which those less highly finished were found, was better marked in this cave than in any other in this country. The absence of the coprolites of the Hyæna in this as in the Brixham Cave was probably due to their