Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/83

] an admirable account of the birds inhabiting the shores of the lower Meiocene lake in the district of the Allier at St. Gerand-le-Puy, Varennes, and other localities. He has described sixty-six species belonging to groups, some of which are no longer found in the region north of the Mediterranean. Parroquets and trogons inhabited the woods; birds-nest-swifts built their nests in hollows of the rocks, after the fashion of those which one finds at the present time in the Indian Archipelago; a secretary bird, closely allied to that of the Cape of Good Hope, hunted in the plains the serpents and reptiles which then, as now, must have formed its usual food; and eagles swooped down on their prey. Large marabouts, cranes, flamingoes, and strange extinct birds, Palælodus, allied to the flamingoes and the ordinary waders and ibises, haunted the borders of the streams. Pelicans floated in the lakes, while sand-grouse and numerous gallinaceous birds contributed to give to this ornithological fauna a most striking character, which reminds us of those pictures which Livingstone has put before us of lakes in southern Africa. The greater part of these birds appear to have nested in the Allier, if they did not inhabit the district throughout the whole year.

The remains of the animals found at Sansan and Simorre in the south of France, may be taken to represent the mammalia of Europe in the middle stage of the Meiocene period. The following new genera make their appearance. A hog with small canines found his living in the forests, and deer and antelopes, remarkable for