We find in the Fens of course everything of later date, down to the drowned animals of last winter's storm, or the stranded pike left when the flood went down. It is a curious fact and very like instinct at fault that in floods the pike wander into shallow water and linger in the hollows till too late to get back to the river, so that large numbers of them are found dead when the water has soaked in or evaporated. An old man told me that he well remembered when pike were more abundant they used to dig holes along the margin when the flood was rising and when it went down commonly found several fine pike in them. This explains why we so often find the bones of pike in the peat, but where did the pike get into a habit so little conducive to the survival of the species?
Although we notice at the present day a constant change in the mollusca, their general continuity throughout the long ages from pre-glacial times is a very remarkable fact.
The presence of Corbicula fluminalis and Unio littoralis in the Gravels characterized by the cold-climate group of mammals such as Rhinoceros tichorhinus and Elephas primigenius, the absence of those shells from the deposits in which Rh. merckii and E. antiquus are the representative forms, and their existence now only in more southern latitudes, as France, Sicily or the Nile, but not in our Turbiferous Series, lay before us a series of apparent inconsistencies not easy of explanation.
Man.
Every step in the line of enquiry we have been following, from whatever point of view we have regarded the evidence, has forced upon us the conclusion that a long interval elapsed between the Areniferous and Turbiferous series as seen in the Fens; and yet, having regard to the geographical history of the area with which we commenced, we cannot but feel that the various deposits represent only episodes in a continuous slow development due to changes of level both here and further afield and the accidents incidental to denudation.
But the particular deposits which we are examining happen to have been laid down near sea level where small changes produce great effects. We may feel assured that over the adjoining higher ground the changes would have been imperceptible when they were occurring and the results hardly noticeable.
If the Fen Beds include nearly the whole of the Neolithic stage the idea that glacial conditions then prevailed over the adjoining higher ground is quite untenable.
So far everything has taught us that the Fens occupy a well-defined position in the evolution of the geographical features of East Anglia and also that the fauna is distinctive, and, having regard to the whole facies, quite different from that of the sands and gravels which occur at various levels all round and pass under the Turbiferous Series of the Fens.
We will now enquire what is the place of these deposits in the "hierarchy" based upon the remains of man and his handiwork.
No Palaeolithic remains have ever been found in the Fen deposits. We must not infer from this that there is everywhere evidence of a similar break or long interval of time between the Palaeolithic and Neolithic ages. There are elsewhere remains of man and his handiwork which we must refer to later Palaeolithic than anything found in the Areniferous Series just near the Fen Beds, and there are, not far off, remains of man's handiwork which appear to belong to the Neolithic age, but to an earlier part of it than anything yet found in association with the Fen Beds.