Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/94

66 One severe winter would have destroyed the evergreen forests, and the exotic plants and animals would disappear and be replaced by others capable of flourishing under the new conditions. The blocks of stone may have been carried down by glaciers from the Alpine chain, then lifted high up above the sea into the icy temperature which is to be met with everywhere on the earth at great altitudes. They may be referred to that glacial climate which is above our head even at the equator, rather than to glacial conditions extending down to the sea-level in Italy, in a period when the climate of middle and northern Europe was warmer than it is now—a period, moreover, in which, if Professor Heer's views be accepted, even in the Arctic Regions, it was sufficiently mild to allow the spruces, elms, and hazels, the hemlocks and swamp cypresses to flourish in Grinnell Land, almost as far north as latitude 82°, and the vine, walnut, tulip tree, and mammoth tree to grow luxuriantly in Iceland.

Was man an inhabitant of Europe in the Meiocene age? Did he wander through the evergreen forests and hunt the deer, antelopes, and hogs, the Hipparions, Mastodons, and Deinotheres, then so numerous? The climate was favourable, and the food, animal and vegetable, was most abundant. The representatives of the higher apes were present in Germany, Switzerland, France, Italy, and Greece, and all the conditions were satisfied which have been put forward by Dr. Falconer and Sir John Lubbock as necessary to that primeval