Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/285

] Canada than that which characterises Germany at the present time. Mr. Godwin Austen draws the same conclusion, from the thick bark of the trees, in his memoir on the "Superficial Accumulations of the Coasts of the English Channel."

The mammalia inhabiting Great Britain and Ireland in the Prehistoric period may be divided into three groups—the wild species which have survived from the Pleistocene age; those which have been introduced under the care of man; and lastly, the domestic animals which have reverted to a wild state. In the forests and woodlands then covering the British Isles, and extending to a little distance beyond the present coast-line (Fig. 95), were wild boars, horses, roes and stags, Irish elks, true elks, and reindeer, and the great wild ox, the urus, as well as the Alpine hare, the common hare, and the rabbit. Wolves, foxes and badgers, martens and wild cats, were abundant; the brown bear, and the closely allied variety the grisly bear, were the two most formidable competitors of man in the chase. Otters pursued the salmon and the trout in the rivers, beavers constructed their wonderful dams, and water rats haunted the banks of the streams. These constitute the first group of survivals from the Pleistocene age.

The Irish elk demands especial notice among the Prehistoric wild animals from its vast numbers in Ireland, as well as from the fact that it is the sole survivor from the Pleistocene into the Prehistoric age, which