280
S. HAZZLEDINE WARREN.
for our district. When Mr. Wrigley was assisting me with the
Arctic beds of the Lea Valley, he found one damaged and abraded
leaf-shaped point, thin and flaked on both sides, of a decidedly
Solutrian appearance in the Temple Mills section.*
CONCLUSION.
I am generally of an independent temperament, but as time
has gone on I have broken away more completely from the
influence of the weight of opinion which gives the maximum cold
of later Pleistocene times to the Mousterian. I have come to
realize (as I now think) more adequately the import of the Magda-
lenian evidences, when a vast area of Western Europe was under
the sway of Arctic tundra conditions, with the Reindeer fauna
extending as far south as Mentone. We should not overdo
scepticism upon the value of fauna and flora as an index of
climate, because the Arctic fauna and flora did not occupy this
territory before, and did not occupy it after the Upper
Palaeolithic epoch. It was a temporary invasion for a brief
geological period, and the previously existent fauna and flora
came back (with some losses and changes) and re-established
itself again in its old home. It was a biological revolution
and counter-revolution of the first magnitude. I cannot now
doubt that these European evidences must be correlated with
the Ponders End Stage of south-eastern England.
In conclusion, my general moral of the whole matter is that
we need less theory and more facts, such as the members of
the Geologists' Association may harvest from the fertile soil
of England.
* The occurrence of blades of Solutrian appearance in the later drifts of East Anglia
has since been recorded by J. R. Moir, Proc. Preh. Soc. E. Anglia vol. iv., 1923 p. 71.
Some theories of classification have been based upon a flake from Cambridge of supposed
late Palaeolithic date (Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. lxxv., 1920 p. 222). I examined this in
association with several of my friends who are acquainted with flint flaking, and we un-
animously agreed that it was a natural chip, and not a human artifact.