53 



inhabitants of wanner climates, are shewn at this period to have been 

 fitted for extreme cold, and from the fact, that a perfect skeleton 

 of the same species that lived at Bath — the R. tichorinus was found 

 in the ice of the river Lena covered with long shaggy hair. Tho 

 same was the case with the Elephas primigenius, numbers of whose 

 hones are being found in the frozen gravels of Siberia, and a 

 perfect skeleton, also preserved in ice, and covered with a thick 

 woolly coat, is now in the museum of St. Petersburgh. The 

 reindeer, lemming, and other mammalia of northern types point 

 also to the conclusion that a great climatal change has taken place 

 in this country since they were roaming over our adjoining hills. 



Although, in the immediate neighbourhood of Bath, I have never 

 seen any satisfactory evidence of the handiwork of man in the 

 post-pliocene deposits, from that which is found in other districts 

 there can be no doubt that in the infancy of the race he was 

 contemporaneous with the extinct remains of which I have been 

 speaking. 



At the time of the glacial epoch icebergs were travelling over 

 Great Britain and parts of Europe, or stranding on the shores, 

 dropping as they melted the ponderous blocks of granite and other 

 rocks, brought away by them from their parent beds, and which no 

 other agency could have strewn over the surfaces where they are 

 now found. 



Whilst we have evidence of these climatal changes in this 

 country the same fact applies to our northern latitudes, and shews 

 that where now the temperature is so severe it has been much 

 milder. This in older geological time is seen by the presence of the 

 carboniferous limestone, and the coal measures with their tropical 

 plants, and by succeeding beds having a fauna which in those of 

 the same age are found in this country. In the miocene period, 

 almost at the dawn of our own era. Professor Heer, who has been 

 studying the botany of Spitzbergen, has shewn in that desolate 

 region the presence of gigantic oaks, the Wellingtonia, evergreens, 

 and other fossil plants shewing a temperate climate. 



What wonderful revolutions do these facts attest ! 



Immediately preceding the deposit of the gravels and alluvial 

 clays in the Bath basin the glacial epoch was coming to a close. 



