Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/92

64 Meiocene Europe are confirmed by the distribution of animal life. Among the insects of Switzerland we find the white ants, or termites, now peculiar to hot countries, dragonflies of South African type, land crabs, also peculiar to the tropics, and among the mollusca inhabiting the rivers and lakes, the exotic genus Melania. The insect fauna, however, of Oeningen contains very many forms now living in Switzerland and in southern Europe, and is, on the whole, as Professor Heer observes, more of Mediterranean than of tropical and American stamp.

The amphibians and the reptiles belong to genera now widely scattered, and some peculiar to warm countries. The gigantic Meiocene salamander (Andrias Scheuchzeri), four feet long, is allied to those of southern Japan and America; a gigantic frog is closely allied to the horned frog of Brazil; a crocodile to that now found in the Nile; an alligator-tortoise, about three feet long, to that of the genus now abundant in the warm rivers of the Southern States; and a river tortoise (Emys) to those of the rivers of India and Africa.

The secretary birds, ibises, flamingoes, parroquets, and marabouts present us with an assemblage of birds now found only in warm regions; while the giraffes, antelopes, deer, and rhinoceroses of middle and southern Europe are forms analogous to those now restricted to tropical Africa and southern Asia. Monkeys of various sorts extended from the Mediterranean as far north as Eppelsheim, and fed upon the figs and bread-fruits, walnuts, almonds, dates, rice, and millet, as well as on the acorns, then growing in those regions.