Page:Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, vol. 33.djvu/841

Rh The number of young bisons under three months old confirms the conclusion at which I had arrived in the paper already laid before the Society as to the presence of that animal in the district in the summer, while the absence of young reindeer of that age renders it very probable that the reindeer herds were here in the winter. The association of these two forms in this deposit proves the truth of the views held by Lyell and myself as to the seasonal migration of the Pleistocene animals. The remains of the other species need no remark.

This vast accumulation of the remains of the animals, amounting altogether to 6800 catalogued specimens (4195 in the present exploration), was found in an area not more than 25 x 18 x 8 feet, and was obviously the result of the animals crowding into the pools and being drowned. It is on the route by which the bisons and reindeer must have passed from the pastures of the valley of Hope over the Pennine Chain into the plains of Cheshire, the two passes of the Winnetts and Mam Tor converging at that very point. It is an exact parallel to those great accumulations of the remains of bison which, according to the recent admirable monograph of Dr. Allen ("On the American Bisons," Memoirs of Museum of Comparative Anatomy at Harvard College, Cambridge, Mass., iv. no. 10) and the numerous accounts of travellers in the far west, whiten the sides of the drinking-places, and show the former range of the animal over a vast tract from which it has been driven by the hunters.

8. The Deposit of late Pleistocene Age.—On reviewing the whole evidence as to the age of this remarkable deposit, the great numbers of reindeer and bison, coupled with the absence of the extinct species, such as the mammoth and woolly rhinoceros, which have been found in the district, induce me to refer it to the late Pleistocene age, and to a later era than that of the caves of Creswell Crags. It may probably be referred to a time when the hyæna, lion, mammoth, and rhinoceros were no longer found in the district. And it may be correlated with the ossiferous gravel discovered by Captain Luard at Windsor in 1866, in which the bison, reindeer, horse, bear, and wolf were lying side by side, as well as with that near Rugby, which furnished the remains of the bison and reindeer submitted to me by the Rev. J. M. Wilson.