1899] The History of the European Fauna. 241 



through Scotland, Scandinavia, and Greenland. Africa, on the other 

 hand, has never played a role of importance as the source of any of our 

 fauna and flora. Dr. Scharff is never afraid to make use of now sub- 

 merged continents as the stepping stones by means of which our animals 

 and plants reached their present habitat, with the result that in his 

 hands our present fauna and flora necessarily date back to an extremely 

 ancient and in fact Pre-glacial age: 



This Pre-glacial antiquity naturally leads to difficulties. How, for 

 instance, if there was a Glacial age, did anything living survive it ? The 

 way out of the difficulty lies in the belittlement of the severity of the 

 Glacial climate. It was not, argues Dr. Scharff, a period of extermination, 

 but one of comparative mildness. Glaciers there were and the snow-line 

 was lower than at the present date, but this was compatible with a far 

 milder, rnoister climate than is generally attributed to it, so that life, 

 during the summer at all events, may even have been luxuriant. This state 

 of things Dr. Scharff attributes largely to the presence of an immense 

 inland sea which stretched from the present Caspian to the White Sea, 

 and which naturally had a powerful effect on the then climate of Europe 

 and Western Siberia. To the presence of such a sea, and not to the action 

 of land-ice, Dr. Scharff attributes the formation of much of the Euro- 

 pean Boulder-clay ; and he seems inclined to believe with Mr. Mallet 

 that many of the ice-striated and polished rock-surfaces, which have been 

 regarded as quite indisputable evidence of glacier action, may be due to 

 the slipping downwards of heavy masses of mud or gravel from the 

 side of land in the course of emergence from the sea, a supposition 

 which would seem to draw some support from the modern tendency to 

 trace the origins of seismic movements to extensive landslips on conti- 

 nental slopes. 



To support his arguments Dr. Scharff quotes freely from the works of 

 authors, zoological, botanical, and geological, audit is with these facts 

 and the conclusions drawn from them that the book is largel}- filled. 

 With the applications of many of the facts quoted we cannot always 

 agree. We cannot even always follow the arguments based upon them, 

 especially as a study of the peculiar geological problems involved would 

 occupy much time and could only be fully appreciated by a geologist. 

 One thing is certain : Dr. Scharff has produced a book full of suggestions, 

 a book which must make the reader think at almost every page of it, a 

 book which even the opponents of his theories will find useful to keep 

 handy, if only as a work of reference. 



It is the duty of a reviewer to criticise as well as to praise. In our 

 remarks we shall try to mix adverse and favourable comments in fair 

 proportion, but in the case of a work of this kind, where the subject is of 

 such great interest, it is obviously impossible to notice everything that 

 one would wish ; to do so, iu fact, would be to write a second volume 

 as big as, or bigger than Dr. Scharft's. And firstly, whatever may be 

 thought of the minor details of Dr. Scharff's theories, we think he 

 has made it abundantly clear that the exterminating severity of the 

 Glacial period may well have been over-estimated. The experiences of 

 travellers, such as Peary in northernmost Greenland and Nordenskiold at 

 the northernmost cape of Asia (Cape Chelyeuskin), show us clearly 



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