Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 1 (1897).djvu/505

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who feel an interest in their own species, and would study some of the early factors which have served to mould the British race, will find this little book very helpful, and it is one that was much needed. It sketches the prehistoric and eohistoric eras in this country, from Palæolithic times to the Saxon occupation, and spans the period commencing when human weapons consisted of unpolished stone implements, to the iron sword, the coat of mail, and the Anglo-Saxon Church.

But these annals cannot be confined to a purely archæological consideration, nor can they be properly separated from the details of the early British fauna. Palæolithic man, who has not left an arrow-head to show us that he was acquainted with the use of the bow, lived in a Britain—still connected with the Continent—that would now be considered a hunter's paradise. The Hippopotamus, two species alike of Elephant and Rhinoceros, a cave Bear and a cave Lion, Hyæna, Bison, wild Horse, and Reindeer formed a wild Game which was ample for these poorly equipped savages "to chase and be chased by." Even in later Neolithic times, when England had been separated by the sea from the Continent and from Ireland, and primitive man, though still in the Stone Age, was better armed, although the larger animals had become extinct, there was still a fine mammalian fauna one would fain have seen. Our author here wisely quotes the graphic narrative of Boyd Dawkins. There were "wild boars, horses, roes and stags, Irish elks, true elks and reindeer, and the great wild ox, the urus, as well as the Alpine hare, the common hare, and the rabbit. Wolves, foxes and badgers, martens and wild cats were abundant; the brown bear, and the closely allied variety the grisly bear, were the two most formidable competitors of man in