Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/160

132 artificial conditions, ranging, however, farther northwards on the Atlantic coast-line under the mild and equable climate caused by the Gulf Stream. At Moret, near Fontainbleau, it flourished in the Pleistocene age about 4° farther north, and is proved by its numerous leaves and well-ripened fruits to have occupied an important place in the forest-clad valley of the Seine south of Paris. It was associated with ashes, sycamores, hoary poplars, grey and crack willows, spindle-trees, box, Judas-tree, and hazels. Ivy and clematis crept round the branches and hung in festoons overhead, while below were luxuriant clusters of the fronds of the hart's-tongue fern. The presence of the Ficus carica and the Judas-tree in this flora implies that the climate was equable, and that there were no winter frosts, such as those which check their growth so far north as Fontainbleau at the present time. In the late stage of the Pleistocene the winters were far more severe than at the present time in France and Britain, and from the evidence of the section of the Norfolk cliffs, there is reason to believe that there were severe winter frosts in the period immediately succeeding the Forest-bed. The forest of Moret, therefore, is referred to an early stage of the Pleistocene, and taken to be the equivalent of the pre-glacial forest of Norfolk. Here, however, it will be noted that the northern types, such as the Scotch fir, abound, while the southern are not represented; a difference which may be explained satisfactorily by the difference of latitude between Moret and Norfolk. As the evidence stands at present, the zone of northern forests in which the conifers are abundant is not met with at low elevations in France either in the Pleiocene or in the early Pleistocene periods.

The animals inhabiting the area of the Seine, while