Evolution (Biology); Glacial epoch; Human beings -- Origin; Human evolution
The naturalist would have been entitled to assume the former union,
within the Pleistocene period, of all the British Isles with each other
and with the Continent, as expressed in the map, Figure 41, even if
there had been no geological facts in favour of such a junction. For in
no other way would he be able to account for the identity of the fauna
and flora found throughout these lands. Had they been separated ever
since the Miocene period, like Madeira, Porto Santo, and the Desertas,
constituting the small Madeiran Archipelago, we might have expected
to discover a difference in the species of land-shells, not only when
Ireland was compared to England, but when different islands of the
Hebrides were contrasted one with another, and each of them with
England. It would not, however, be necessary, in order to effect the
complete fusion of the animals and plants which we witness, to assume
that all parts of the area formed continuous land at one and the same
moment of time, but merely that the several portions were so joined
within the Pleistocene era as to allow the animals and plants to migrate
freely in succession from one district to another.
SOUTHERNMOST EXTENT OF ERRATICS IN ENGLAND.
In reference to that portion of the south of England which is marked by
diagonal lines in Figure 39, the theory of its having been an area of
dry land during the period of great submergence and floating ice does
not depend merely on negative evidence, such as the absence of the
northern drift or boulder clay on its surface; but we have also, in
favour of the same conclusion, the remarkable fact of the presence of
erratic blocks on the southern coast of Sussex, implying the existence
there of an ancient coast-line at a period when the cold must have been
at its height.
These blocks are to be seen in greatest number at Pagham and Selsea, 15
miles south of Chichester, in latitude 50 degrees 40 minutes north.
They consist of fragments of granite, syenite and greenstone, as well as
of Devonian and Silurian rocks, some of them of large size. I measured
one of granite at Pagham, 27 feet in circumference. They are not of
northern origin, but must have come from the coast of Normandy or
Brittany, or from land which may once have existed to the south-west, in
what is now the English Channel.
They were probably drifted into their present site by coast ice, and
the yellow clay and gravel in which they are embedded are a littoral
formation, as shown by the shells. Beneath the gravel containing these
large erratics, is a blue mud in which skeletons of Elephas antiquus,
and other mammalia, have been observed. Still lower occurs a sandy loam,
from which Mr. R.G. Austen* has collected thirty-eight species of marine
shells, all Recent, but forming an assemblage differing as a whole from
that now inhabiting the English Channel.
(* "Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society" volume 13
1857 page 50.)
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