374 BRITISH MAMMALS 



after his first incursion he may have retreated before the ice until 

 conditions became more tolerable. Nevertheless, he would seem 

 certainly to have been contemporaneous in England with the 

 great fauna of Early and Mid-Pleistocene times, and in Ireland 

 to have co-existed with the huge megaceros deer, while his 

 remains in Western Scotland go back to an equally remote 

 antiquity. 



The first types of Palaeolithic man that invaded these islands 

 were related to that low, almost simian race of Belgium and 

 Germany which we distinguish as the Neanderthaloid type, a 

 type, in all probability, not much different from the generalised 

 Australian aboriginal, who is either a very low Caucasian or a 

 direct descendant of the basal type of humanity. A picture of 

 the living Veddah of Ceylon would give a very fair idea of the 

 aspect of Palaeolithic British man. It is possible, however, that 

 there is a Mongoloid element in the British races. Early in the 

 history of mankind an enterprising section of the early Mon- 

 golian, or yellow-skinned, straight-haired race boldly attacked 

 the frozen North as it lay under the glaciers of the Pleistocene. 

 Becoming more and more carnivorous, and learning to clothe 

 themselves in the skins of the beasts they killed, and, no doubt, 

 making use of the recently acquired knowledge of fire produc- 

 tion, these early Mongoloids (equivalent to the modern Eskimo) 

 apparently ranged round the northern regions of the Old and 

 New Worlds, and came to Britain and France when the cold 

 was still great, but when there were abundant supplies of rein- 

 deer, horses, mammoth, and wild cattle to nourish carnivorous 

 man. It is possible that a little Palaeolithic blood still lingers in 

 Britain, especially in out-of-the-way parts of Ireland, Wales, and 

 Scotland. It is equally likely that in the same localities there is 

 more than a dash of the Eskimo, giving the broad cheek bones, 

 flattened nose, clumsy build, and peepy eyes of the Hyperborean 

 as seen in the modern Samoieds and Eskimo. 



But under more favourable conditions in Western Asia and 

 Southern Europe the Caucasic race had developed that handsome 

 type which it is convenient to call Iberian— the white-skinned. 



