Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/205

] jaws in the cave, ranging from cubhood to old age. The victims identified by Professor Busk belong to the grisly bear, wolf, common fox, bison, reindeer, Irish elk, horse, woolly rhinoceros, and mammoth, to which must be added the arctic fox, so abundant in the Polar regions, and the glutton or wolverine, ranging from the Polar regions as far south as the forests of Germany. The arctic fox is new to Britain, although it has been discovered in the caves of France, Germany, and Switzerland; and the glutton has only been previously met with in the cave of Plas Heaton, near St. Asaph, In these remains we have the materials for forming an idea of the animals living in the woodlands of Yorkshire, Derbyshire, and Nottinghamshire. We may picture to ourselves the horses, bisons, and reindeer trooping down to drink, with here and there an Irish elk, or an unwieldy mammoth or rhinoceros. The drinking-places were the chosen haunts of packs of hyænas, by which even large and powerful creatures, such as grisly bears and rhinoceroses, were overwhelmed, and their remains carried piecemeal into the dens, to be devoured at leisure.

Man is proved to have formed the central figure in this very remarkable assemblage of animals, by the numerous implements and articles left behind in the chambers and passages of the Robin Hood cavern, or that next explored, which were filled with strata in the following order:—