Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/59

] third very much smaller, while a fourth was remarkable for its compressed and serrated canines, like those of the Machairodus, or sabre-toothed lion haunting the Meiocene, Pleiocene, and Pleistocene forests of Europe.

At the close of the mid Eocene period there was a general elevation of the continent, in which the southern parts of Britain participated, the coast-line being pushed farther to the south, and the area which had been occupied by the south-eastern sea being covered with the fresh waters of a river. The frequent alternation of marine and fresh water deposits in the Isle of Wight, in Hampshire, and in Sussex, show that those districts were then constantly subject to oscillations of level.

The vegetation covering the southern parts of Britain is imperfectly known, but from the few fragments which are preserved it was, probably, closely allied to that of the mid (Fig. 4) and lower Eocene. In the Isle of Wight the forests were to some extent composed of palms. The mammals, however, present differences of the very highest importance. Instead of the solitary Lophiodon which happens to have been found in the deposits of the Nummulitic sea, the remains of a varied mammalian fauna have been discovered in the south of England. Animals (Palæotherium) like the tapirs of tropical Asia and America wandered in the forests and on the banks of the rivers (Fig. 5). There were also herds of Anchitheres, which have been proved by the researches of Professors Marsh and Huxley to have