Page:Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, vol. 28.djvu/539

1872.]

The following animals are peculiar to this stage:—

The following make their appearance:—The Beaver, Musk-shrew, Cave-bear, Roe, Stag, Irish Elk, Urus and Bison, Wild Boar, Horse (?), Mammoth, Wolf, and Fox.

The Pliocene Ursus arvernensis, Cervus Polignacus, Rhinoceros etruscus, and Elephas meridionalis still living.

The three subdivisions of the Pleistocene do not apply to the region south of the Alps and Pyrenees, because the northern group of animals did not pass into Spain and Italy. In these two latter countries we find that assemblage of animals living throughout the Pleistocene age, which in France and Britain lived only in the early stage.

Mr. was hardly prepared to accept the proposed division of the Pleistocene mammalia into three groups—at all events so far as Britain was concerned. Neither could he draw that distinction between the beds at Erith and Grays and those higher up the Thames, which found favour with the author. The barrier offered by the river itself might to some extent account for the absence of Reindeer; and though there was a difference in the fauna in the two cases, it seemed hardly enough to mark any great distinction in time. As for the Hippopotamus, which occurred over the whole of Northern Europe, associated with the Musk-ox and large boulders, he could not see how the conclusion was to be escaped of its having been able to withstand greater cold than its present representative. Though the winters might have been colder, there was evidence in favour of the summers having been warmer; and the flora seems to have been much like that of the present day. The probable migrations of the different animal groups had already been pointed out by M. Lartet, though Mr. Dawkins had carried his investigation of the subject further. Mr. Prestwich called attention to the fact of the Mammoth having been found in Italy.

Mr. regretted that the author had not included within his province any of the marine Crag-deposits, some of which had been regarded as Pleistocene. In these beds the fish had been regarded by M. Agassiz as tropical in character, while M. Deshayes considered the molluscan remains arctic. A similar discrepancy had been observed in other deposits of the same series; and he con-