76 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



changes in climate and geography, and in the wild animals of Europe, 

 as well as of the succession of the various races and the development 

 of civilization, which, so far as our experience goes, could not have 

 been swift. 



The discoveries cited above prove that the lion and the river-drift 

 hunter lived in the valley of the lower Thames, along with many ani- 

 mals now only to be found in temperate climates, with some which are 

 now to be sought in warm climates, and with others that are extinct. 

 We have noted also the presence of a few Arctic stragglers. In the 

 long course of ages the climate gradually became colder in the valley 

 of the Thames, and vast numbers of reindeer wandered over the area 

 which had formerly been occupied by stags, uri, and the other animals 

 already mentioned. Their remains lie scattered through the river 

 gravels and loams at various heights above the level of the Thames, 

 from Oxford and Abingdon down to London. The numerous remains, 

 for example, found in digging the new cavalry barracks at Windsor, 

 belonged one half to the reindeer and the rest to bisons, horses, bears, 

 and wolves. They had evidently been washed down from a ford 

 higher up stream, which these animals were in the habit of using year 

 by year. The vast herds of migrating reindeer in Siberia and of 

 bisons in North America cross the rivers very generally at the same 

 points year after year, and are followed by the same kinds of beasts 

 of prey, which bring up the rear and prey upon the stragglers. The 

 lion, too, is proved, by the discovery of his remains in the gravel-beds 

 of London along with reindeer, to have shared in the attack on the 

 reindeer, horses, and bisons, as it is now to be seen among the ante- 

 lopes in tropical Africa. Could we follow it to its haunts in the wood- 

 lands then occupying the site of London we should see it springing 

 upon other animals, such as the Irish elk or the young of the woolly 

 rhinoceros, mammoth, or hippopotamus. And could we penetrate to 

 the banks of the streams, guided by a thin column of smoke rising 

 above the tops of the trees at Hackney or Gray's Inn, we should come 

 upon the rude shelters of the river-drift hunters the men selecting 

 blocks of flint and chipping implements out of them, the women pre- 

 paring the meal of flesh, and the children looking on and breaking the 

 silence of the evening with their shouts, on those very spots where 

 now is to be heard day and night the voice of our great city. Man is 

 here, as before, the rival of the lion in the chase. 



The lion, along with the above-mentioned group of animals, has 

 been discovered in the river deposits over the whole of Southern Eng- 

 land, and as far to the north as Bielbecks in the North Riding of 

 Yorkshire. It lived in the areas of Cambridge, Bedford, and Salisbury. 

 It is, however, far more abundant in the caves, into which, in most 

 cases, it has been dragged by the hyenas. The pack of hyenas in- 

 habiting the Cave of Kirkdale, in the Vale of Pickering, fed upon rein- 

 deer in the winter, and at other times on horses and bisons, and were 



