Page:Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, vol. 28.djvu/507

1872.]

The mammalia of Acton Green, obtained by Col. Lane Fox, and named by Prof. Busk, F.R.S., all probably belong to the late Pleistocene division; for although the peculiar flat-antlered deer, C. Browni, and the Hippopotamus are found side by side, they are associated with the Mammoth and the Reindeer.

It remains now to compare this fauna with that of the Ossiferous caves. In comparing the Table of the distribution of the Mammalia in Britain, which I have published in the Q.J.G.S. (vol. xxv.) with the above list, it will be seen that all the mammalia which are found in the latter, with the exception of Ovibos moschatus, occur also in the former. Those animals which are peculiar to the caves consist chiefly of the carnivores, the Cave-bear, Glutton, Leopard, Lynx, and Wild Cat, which would naturally haunt such places. The larger number of rodents obtained from the caves is due to the admirable way in which Mr. Ayshford Sanford has worked out the Mendip fauna, and is not the result of their absence from the river-beds; the same amount of care bestowed on the latter would probably equalize the numbers. It is therefore evident that the cave-fauna is identical with that of the river-strata, and that, consequently, both must be referred to the same point of geological time—to a time when this group of animals lived in the caves and valleys of the Pleistocene continent. This was the conclusion to which Dr. Falconer was led by the examination of the caves of Gower, and it has been amply proved by every subsequent discovery.

The late Pleistocene corresponds in part with the Reindeer-period of M. Lartet; but it comprehends also his three other periods ; for the Spotted Hyæna, the Lion, the Cave-bear, the Mammoth, the Woolly Rhinoceros, the Bison, and the Urus are so associated together with the Reindeer in the caves and river-deposits of Great Britain, that they do not afford a means of classification. The arctic division of the Mammalia was then in full possession of the area