Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 1 (1897).djvu/121

Rh

the object of clearing up certain doubtful points as to the relation of Palæolithic Man to the glacial epoch, a Committee, under the presidency of Sir John Evans, was appointed at the Ipswich meeting of the British Association in 1895. Its report, drawn up by the Secretary, Mr. Clement Reid, was presented to the Liverpool Meeting of the British Association, 1896.

Work was commenced at Hoxne. A pit was sunk to a depth of 20 feet, and a boring continued 22 feet lower, when the glacial sand (underlying the boulder clay) was reached. This represented a depth of about 51 feet from the surface which existed before the brickyard was worked in which the investigations were made. A chain of borings east and west of this trial pit was also effected.

Mr. T.V. Holmes, in summarising this report in the pages of the 'Essex Naturalist,' writes:—"The explorers think that long after the disappearance of the ice which deposited the chalky boulder clay (the latest glacial deposit of East Anglia) the land was somewhat higher than at present, so that the silted-up channel could be excavated to a depth slightly greater than that of the present channel of the Waveney. Then gradual subsidence turned this channel into a shallow fresh-water lake. After the lake became silted up it was grown over by a temperate flora. Then lacustrine conditions again prevailed, and a colder climate, resulting in the deposition of bed C (black loam with leaves of arctic plants). Then followed the floods, during which the palæolithic beds B (gravel and carbonaceous loam) (no implements at this spot) and A (brick-earth with fresh-water shells, wood, and palæolithic implements) were deposited. The palæolithic deposits at Hoxne are therefore, as Mr. Reid remarks, not only later than the boulder clay of East Anglia, but are separated from it by two climatic waves, with corresponding changes of the flora."

the January meeting of the Zoological Society of London, Mr. Sclater exhibited a photograph of a young Anteater, Myrmecophaga jubata, two days' old, born in the Zoological Garden of Herr Adolf Nill, at Stuttgart. Mr. Sclater remarked that this was the first instance, so far as he knew, of this animal having bred in captivity.

a meeting of the Linnean Society of London held Dec. 17th, Mr. J.E. Harting exhibited a supposed hybrid between the Common Brown Hare,