mediate form connecting the human race with the lower animals.
Relation of River-drift Man to the Glacial Phenomena.
The Palæolithic hunter of the mid and late Pleistocene river-deposits in Europe belongs, as we have already shown, to a fauna which arrived in Britain before the lowering of the temperature produced glaciers and icebergs in our country; he may therefore be viewed as being probably pre-glacial. When the temperature was lowest he probably retreated southwards, and returned northwards as it grew warmer, precisely in the same manner as the mammalia on which he depended for food. From these à priori considerations he may also be viewed as interglacial; but it must be remarked that the proof of this, brought forward by Mr. Skertchly[1] from his discoveries at Brandon and elsewhere in Norfolk and Suffolk, is still under discussion, and that it is not established by any other discovery, unless the lower brick-earths of Crayford and Erith be considered pre- or inter-glacial. He was, however, in this country after the retreat of the ice and the disappearance of the icebergs from the area of south-eastern England,
- ↑ The Fenland, by H. S. Miller and S. B. J. Skertchly, 8vo, 1878, p. 546; also S. B. J. Skertchly, Mem. of Geol. Survey of Great Britain. The strata containing the implements are considered by Professors Hughes and Bonney not to be of clearly ascertained inter- or pre-glacial age. Mr. Skertchly's conclusions are accepted by Professor Ramsay and Mr. Whitaker, and put by the prudent caution of Mr. Evans "to a suspense account." I feel inclined to accept the evidence brought before the British Association at Sheffield in 1879, founded on the sections at High Lodge, Culford, Mildenhall, West Stow, and Broomhill, in favour of man having lived in East Anglia before the upper boulder clay had ceased to be deposited.
