638 Professor L. G. Midi, [Feb. 18, 



In our day the Yorkshire moor harbours no quadrupeds, and the 

 grassy hills none but small quadrupeds. It was not always so. At 

 Eaygill, a few miles from us across the moors, a collection of bones 

 was discovered a few years ago in quarrying. A deep fissure in the 

 rock had been choked ages before with stones and clay. This fissure 

 was cut across by the working face of the quarry. Many bones were 

 brought out of it, bones of the ox and roebuck among the rest. But 

 mixed up with these were teeth and bones of quadrupeds now alto- 

 gether extinct or no longer found in Britain, such as the straight- 

 tusked elephant [E. antiqmis), the hippopotamus, a southern rhinoceros 

 (B. leptorhimis), the cave by ana, and the European bison. The Irish 

 (Ik is often dug up in Yorkshire, the reindeer and the true elk now 

 and then. Not very long ago these and other large quadrupeds 

 grazed or hunted a country which can now show no quadruped 

 bigger than a fox. 



It is evident that the moors, valleys and plains of Y^orkshire have 

 been depopulated in comparatively recent times. The disappearance 

 of so many conspicuous species is commonly attributed to the glacial 

 period, but I think that the action of man has been still more 

 influential. The extinct animals are such as man hunts for profit or 

 for his own safety. Many of them, among others the cave bear, 

 Machairodus, Irish elk, mammoth, and straight-tusked elephant, are 

 known to have lasted inta the human period. That so many of them 

 were last seen in the company of man is some proof that he was 

 concerned in their death. 



Central Europe, before man appeared within its borders, or while 

 men were still few, little resembled the Europe which we know. 

 Much of it was covered with woods, morasses or wastes, and inhabited 

 by animals and plants, of which some ranged into the Arctic circle, 

 others to the Mediterranean, Africa and India. The worst lands of 

 all — cold, wet, and wind-sw^ept — had doubtless then, as now, the 

 greatest proportion of Arctic species. But it is likely that the 

 passage from the bleak hills to the more fertile valleys and plains 

 was not then so abrupt as at present. All was al.ke undrained and 

 unenclosed ; and what we know of the distribution of life in Pleisto- 

 cene Europe shows us that a large proportion of ojir European 

 animals and plants are not restricted by nature within narrow limits 

 of latitude or climate. Species which are now isolated, at least in 

 Central Europe, occupying moors or other special tracts, and sur- 

 rounded by a population with which they have little in common, 

 were formerly continuous over vast areas. In the early days of man 

 in Europe many plants, birds and quadrupeds which are now almost 

 exclusively Arctic may well have ranged over nearly the whole of 

 Europe. 



As men gradually rooted themselves in what are now^ the most 

 populous countries of the world, the fauna and flora underwent 

 sweeping changes. The forests were cleared, and trees of imported 

 species planted here and there; The land was drained, and fenced^ 



