ESSAY-REVIEWS 265 



the work of the great pioneer to whom the very words palaeo- 

 lithic and neolithic are due demands a place in every library. 



It would be difficult to imagine a book more completely 

 modern than the new edition of Prof. Sollas's Ancient Hunters. 

 Here the student may find the results of the most recent 

 research and a full discussion of the questions which are still a 

 matter of controversy. Investigation has proceeded in several 

 different directions. In the first place, our knowledge of the 

 kind of environment in which the early men of Europe lived 

 has been enlarged. It is not too much to say that the existence 

 of four distinct glacial epochs in the Pleistocene, with of course 

 three interglacial epochs, is now proved, and Prof. Sollas 

 lends no support to the perverse scepticism with which the 

 reality of interglacial periods is still regarded in some quarters. 

 The interglacial flora is even more convincing than the fauna, 

 although monkeys and hippopotami are significant enough. 

 A charming piece of evidence is that of the Pontic Alpine 

 Rose, Rhododendron ponticum. At Hotting, near Innsbruck, 

 there is a famous breccia that lies between two boulder clays, 

 which Prof. Sollas believes represent the third and fourth 

 glacial epochs respectively. In this Hotting breccia fossil 

 remains of R. ponticum have been found, and as the plant 

 lives at the present day in the Caucasus and other regions 

 with a considerably warmer climate than that of Innsbruck, the 

 fossils give us a clear indication of interglacial conditions. 

 Sollas, following Prof. Penck of Berlin, concludes that the snow- 

 line around Innsbruck in the days of the Hotting breccia stood 

 no less than one thousand feet above its existing level. Of 

 course, the evidence of this rhododendron, illustrations of which 

 are reproduced here, does not stand alone, but is corroborated 

 by many other proofs of an interglacial flora. 



Another much-debated problem is the antiquity of worked 

 flints, and here Sollas is a safe and an expert guide. Pliocene 

 and even Miocene eoliths, as well as the Pliocene East Anglian 

 " rostro-carinates " of Reid Moir, were accepted by Lord 

 Avebury, but I do not think many people will have much 

 confidence in any of these alleged artifacts after reading Sollas's 

 criticism of the specimens. The Piltdown discovery is not 

 discussed in Ancient Hunters as fully as one would have hoped, 

 but the author agrees with Smith Woodward in regarding the 

 skull as Pleistocene, not Pliocene. 



