ages falls more properly within the limits of anthropology than geology, and presents no points of geological interest worthy of being brought before this Society.
Discussion.[1]
The Chairman (Prof. Prestwich) observed that both communications were of great interest. He believed that this was the first instance of a high-level gravel being described in the neighbourhood to which Mr. Fisher's paper referred. He inquired what was the height of the hill on which the Boulder-clay occurred. The circumstances much resembled those in the Thames valley or near Oxford. In the Somme valley the Hippopotamus occurred only in the low-level gravel; here just the reverse. As regarded Prof. Boyd Dawkins's paper, he remarked that the succession also was of great interest; the absence of man from a particular cave, however, would not necessarily prove his absence for the period.
Prof. Hughes stated that the hills bounding the valley referred to by Mr. Fisher formed part of the Chalk-range, which was 200–300 feet high.
Mr. John Evans said that at Barrington there was another satisfactory instance of the Pleistocene Mammalia in beds more recent than the Chalky Boulder-clay, and in a condition showing they could not be remanié. He doubted whether the worked flint belonged to the age of the beds. The round stones, he thought, afforded no satisfactory evidence of human use. The materials of the gravel were evidently derived from the glacial drift. At Barnwell a flint implement of the St.-Acheul type had been found.
Mr. R. H. Tiddeman congratulated the authors upon the importance of their discoveries, the succession of the two distinct faunas in the Cave tending to strengthen the views formerly held by Dr. Falconer as to their relative age. The older was almost identical with the Hyæna-bed in the Victoria Cave. He felt bound to challenge the remark of Prof. Dawkins, "that the existence of Man with Hippopotamus in the Victoria Cave was founded on a mistake." He wished to state that the cut bones of Goat were found in the older beds in that Cave, under such circumstances that it was impossible that they could have fallen from the surface, as suggested; for, by the method of careful working adopted, the upper beds had been previously completely removed. Nor was he (Mr. Tiddeman) singular in believing the Goat to have existed in Pleistocene times.
Prof. Seeley said that no river could have occupied the region described by Mr. Fisher, since a slight depression would convert the existing rivulets into estuaries. He thought the gravels were deposited in salt water, and the freshwater shells and bones of land animals had been introduced by small streams. Two or three specimens of Hyæna, in excellent preservation, were found some years since in Quy Fen. He had described, in the Society's Journal, a rib-bone cut by man, found in the Barnwell gravel, which was
- ↑ This Discussion relates also to a paper by the Rev. O. Fisher, p. 670.
