Page:Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, vol. 28.djvu/534

440 Rhine, which must therefore have retreated at the time the remains were accumulated by Palæolithic man. Prof. Carl Vogt's observation that the same fauna and flora occupied Europe before, during, and after the period of intense cold, seems to me to be amply proved by the discoveries at Dürnten, to which allusion has been made, and many others. The Glacial period can therefore no longer be viewed as a hard and fast barrier, separating one fauna from another, as Sir C. Lyell has shown; and the terms Preglacial, Glacial, and Postglacial cannot be considered of any value in the classification of the mammalia. And although the earliest traces of man found in the river-deposits of Great Britain can be proved from their position to be of Post-boulder-clay age, the Brick-earth of Crayford excepted, it by no means follows that those which have been furnished by the caves of the south of England, or of the south of Prance, are also of the same age; and since the fauna amongst which he lived arrived here before the intense arctic severity of the glacial maximum had been reached in Britain, it is very probable that he came at the same time. In other words, if man be treated merely as a Pleistocene animal, there is every reason for the belief that he formed one of the North-Asiatic group, which was certainly in possession of Northern and Central Europe in Preglacial times. He occupied the area north of the Alps and Pyrenees with the animals of that group, and disappeared with them at the close of the Pleistocene period, and therefore may fairly be assumed to have arrived in Europe in their company.

If the Pleistocene mammalia be compared with those of the Pliocene strata of Auvergne, Montpellier, and the Val d'Arno, it will be seen that the following animals were not known in Europe before the Pleistocene age.

The African Elephant and the Pentlands small Hippopotamus are added by the caves of Sicily, and the pigmy Elephants and the gigantic Dormouse by those of Malta.

The Pleistocene mammalia may be divided into three groups—those derived from Northern and Central Asia, those derived from Africa,