Page:Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, vol. 27.djvu/555

1871.] not increased and multiplied to such a degree as to upset the œconomy of nature, by driving the wild animals away from their feeding-grounds, and robbing the carnivores of a large portion of their food. To this cause I should assign the larger size of nearly all the pleistocene mammalia, as compared with those which are undoubtedly their lineal descendants, such as the Cave-lion, the Cave-hyæna, and the Stag.

The Glutton at the present day inhabits the inclement northern regions of the Old World, to the point where the forests gradually die down into the lonely wastes of the "Tundras," and is to be found in Norway, Sweden, Lapland and as far east as Kamtschatka. In the New World it ranges, under the name of Wolverine, northwards from the latitude of Canada. It was seen by Ross in the 70° parallel in the winter; and its bones have been met with in Melville Island. Its southern limit in Asia is the latitude 50°, where it occurs in the Altai. In Europe its southern limit is not clearly defined; but it has steadily retreated northwards as the vast forests of Germany and Poland gradually fell under the axe of the woodman. According to Eichwald, it once lived in the Lithuanian region along with the Bison, which still lingers there under the protection of an Imperial ukase; and Zimmermann adduces proof of its having been killed as far south as Helmstadt, in Brunswick. In the pleistocene caves of Germany it is found abundantly, with the Reindeer, Cave-lion, and Hyæna, at least as far south as Gailenreuth, in Bavaria, where it was first discovered by Dr. Goldfuss. It is figured and described from the caves of Belgium by Dr. Buckland's great rival, Dr. Schmerling. We might therefore naturally expect to find the animal ranging over our island at a time when it formed part of the mainland of Europe, and offered free access to the same animals (the Reindeer, the Lemming, and the Horse) as those which still furnish food to the living Glutton in Siberia. The presence in Great Britain of a creature adapted for enduring the severity of an Arctic winter, and not now found in any hot regions, along with the Rein-deer, Lemming, and Musk-Sheep, implies that the pleistocene winters were of an Arctic severity—just as the Hippopotamus, found under precisely the same conditions, and associated with the same group of animals, points to a hot summer like that which obtains on the Lower Volga. The intimate association in one spot of animals now confined respectively to the hottest and coldest regions seems to me to admit of no other explanation.

I have added to this essay a list (see p. 410) of the pleistocene animals found in the various caves hitherto explored in the valley of the Elwy, as supplementing the Table of the Distribution of the British mammals published in the Quarterly Journal, May 1869.