Page:Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man.djvu/160

142 sight to imply that the climate had not altered since the flint tools were fabricated; but it appears that all these species of mollusks now range as far north as Norway and Finland, and may therefore have flourished in the valley of the Somme when the river was frozen over annually in winter.

In regard to the accompanying mammalia, some of them, like the mammoth and tichorhine rhinoceros, may have been able to endure the rigours of a northern winter as well as the rein-deer, which we find fossil in the same gravel, it is a more difficult point to determine whether the climate of the lower gravels (those of Menchecourt, for example) was more genial than that of the higher ones. Mr. Prestwich inclines to this opinion. None of those contortions of the strata above described (p. 138) have as yet been observed in the lower drift. It contains large blocks of tertiary sandstone and grit, which may have required the aid of ice to convey them to their present sites; but as such blocks already abounded in the older and higher alluvium, they may simply be monuments of its destruction, having been let down successively to lower and lower levels without making much seaward progress.

The Cyrena fluminalis of Menchecourt and the hippopotamus of St. Roch seem to be in favour of a less severe temperature in winter; but so many of the species of mammalia, as well as of the land and fresh-water shells, are common to both formations, and our information respecting the entire fauna is still so imperfect, that it would be premature to pretend to settle this question in the present state of our knowledge. We must be content with the conclusion (and it is one of no small interest), that when man first inhabited this part of Europe, at the time that the St. Acheul drift was formed, the climate as well as the physical geography of the country differed considerably from the state of things now established there.