Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/154

126 tree did not then exist; hence very probably it had its original home in the extreme north, and has since extended southwards. We first meet it in Europe in the forest bed of the Norfolk coast, and in the interglacial lignites of Switzerland. At that time, therefore, it had come into our regions, and has ever since formed a principal constituent of our forests. Its extreme northern limit is now in Scandinavia, latitude 69$1⁄2$° N.; and it is now spread over about 25° of latitude, whilst during the Meiocene period it was limited to the Arctic zone."

If the reader could have penetrated these forests of the North Sea, he would have found himself in the midst of a group of animals of very singular character. Were he conversant with those of the Pleiocene age, he would have recognised the following species:—Two kinds of elephants, both of gigantic size (E. antiquus and E. meridionalis), two kinds of rhinoceros (R. etruscus and R. megarhinus) from time to time would have appeared before him, and he would have had to guard himself against the attacks of the sabre-toothed lion (Machairodus) and the bear of Auvergne. He might have hunted Sedgwick's deer, an animal with wonder- fully complex antlers (identical with the C. dicranios of Nesti, of the Val d'Arno (Fig. 16), as well as the deer of Polignac), and on the sides of the rivers he might have seen the African hippopotamus. All these species are to be looked upon as survivals from the preceding