Note 60 — Chapter II

Professor Boyd Dawkins (Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc., xxiii, 1867, pp. 91-109, and especially pp. 106-9) has argued that the Lower Brick-Earths in the Thames Valley, under which implements have been found, were preglacial,—locally, I presume. He observed that not one of ‘the Post-glacial Arctic mammalia’, namely, the glutton, lemming, marmot, musk-sheep, elk, and reindeer, is represented in this deposit, and maintains that, on the other hand, the presence of Elephas priscus and the big-nosed rhinoceros (Rhinoceros megarhinus) ‘indicates the affinity of the [Brick-Earth] group to the Praeglacial deposits of Norfolk’, &c. Prestwich, however (ib., xxviii, 1872, p. 445), differed from the professor; and Sir John Evans (ib., p. 446) remarked that if the brick-earth were preglacial ‘there would be a great difficulty in accounting for the presence of the high beds at Shackleton and Highbury, as these, though in a valley confessedly excavated by the river, and regarded as of more recent age than the lower beds, would yet be at a far higher level’.