86 The Scottish Naturalist. 



glacial epoch of the Pleistocene ; but at present we have no direct proof that 

 this was the case. According to our author, however, it cannot be any 

 longer doubted that Palaeolithic man lived in Europe through all the chances 

 and changes of the glacial and interglacial epochs, down to the close of the 

 Pleistocene Period. The direct and indirect evidence on this head seems 

 indeed overwhelmingly strong. That Palaeolithic man did not survive in 

 North-western Europe to post-glacial times is shown by the remarkable fact 

 that not a single relic of his former presence has ever been discovered in any 

 post-glacial deposits. We have referred to the fact that a break or hiatus 

 seems to separate the Palaeolithic from the Neolithic Period. This, Dr Geikie 

 shows, was due to the fact that the latest glacial epoch separates the one 

 stage from the other. We find the Palaeolithic accumulations in many places 

 covered by the deposits laid down during the closing glacial epoch, while 

 not a relic or vestige either of Palaeolithic man, or the more characteristic 

 southern mammals with which he was contemporaneous, has ever yet been 

 detected in accumulations overlying the latest glacial deposits. When the 

 last glacial epoch had passed away, a mammalian fauna, essentially the same 

 as the present, appeared in Europe — the elephant, rhinoceros, hippopota- 

 mus", and their congeners, had vanished for ever. Palaeolithic man seems to 

 have disappeared during the last glacial epoch ; the northern mammals — 

 reindeer, glutton, musk-sheep, *.Vc. — gradually migrated northwards from 

 France and Switzerland ; but the artistic folk of the Reindeer Period did not 

 follow or accompany them through North-western Europe to the arctic 

 regions. After the climate had lost its arctic character, and a temperate fauna 

 and flora had spread through Central and North-western Europe, Neolithic 

 man appeared upon the scene for the first time. The historical geology of 

 Post-glacial and Recent times is hardly less interesting than that of the Pleis- 

 tocene ; and our author has devoted to it, therefore, rather more than a third 

 of his portly volume. But our space will not permit us to present any out- 

 line of the fascinating tale. We can only say that the geographical and cli- 

 matic changes are discussed very fully, and that the author's views differ 

 considerably from those which have hitherto been held. He is of opinion 

 that in Post-glacial times Iceland and the Faeroe Isles were joined to the 

 European continent by way of Britain and the North Sea ; and it is hard to 

 see how the evidence adduced by him can be otherwise explained. The 

 separation of our own islands from the continent took place during the 

 Neolithic Period. Proofs are brought forward to show that considerable 

 fluctuations of climate supervened during Post-glacial and Recent times — 

 genial and cold wet conditions alternating — to the former of which are attri- 

 buted the ancient buried forests in the peat-bogs of our own islands, Scandi- 

 navia, the Faeroe Isles, &c. , while to the latter are assigned the accumula- 

 tion of the larger proportion of the peat-bogs themselves. The evidence for 

 these great geographical and physical changes the author finds not only 

 in the peat-bogs, raised beaches, and recent alluvia, but also in the present 

 distribution of plants and animals in North-western Europe, and in the 

 results obtained during the recent deep-sea dredgings in the North Atlantic. 

 In concluding this too brief resume of a work, the value of which — not 

 merely from the vast array of facts brought together, but more especially from 

 the lucid and masterly interpretation of the silent evidence that these facts 

 present— it is impossible to rate too highly, we would urge upon all natural- 



