CHAP. xix. AGES OF STONE AND BRONZE. 371 



Bell, and Kutimeyer, by one of the domesticated races of 

 cattle now in Europe. (See p. 25.) 



These monuments, therefore, whether of stone or bronze, 

 belong to what I have termed geologically the Kecent Period, 

 the definition of which some may think rather too dependent 

 on negative evidence, or on the non-discovery hitherto of 

 extinct mammalia, such as the mammoth, which may one 

 day turn up in a fossil state in some of the oldest peaty 

 deposits, as, indeed, it is already said to have done at some 

 spots, though I have failed, as yet, to obtain authentic 

 evidence of the fact.* No doubt some such exceptional cases 

 may be met with in the course of future investigations, for 

 we are still imperfectly acquainted with the entire fauna of 

 the age of stone in Denmark, as we may infer from an 

 opinion expressed by Steenstrup, that some of the instru 

 ments exhumed by antiquaries from the Danish peat are 

 made of the bones and horns of the elk and reindeer. Yet 

 no skeleton or uncut bone of either of those species has 

 hitherto been observed in the same peat. 



Nevertheless, the examination made by naturalists of the 

 various Danish and Swiss deposits of the recent period has 

 been so searching, that the finding in them of a stray 

 elephant or rhinoceros, should it ever occur, would prove 

 little more than that some few individuals lingered on, when 

 the species was on the verge of extinction, and such rare 

 exceptions would not render the classification above pro 

 posed inappropriate. 



At the time when many wild quadrupeds and birds were 

 growing scarce, and some of them becoming locally ex 

 tirpated in Denmark, great changes were taking place in the 



* A molar of E. primigenius, in a submerged mass of vegetable matter 



very fresh state, in the museum at at the extremity of the valley in which 



Torquay, believed to have been washed Tor Abbey stands, is the best case I 



up by the waves of the sea out of the have seen. 



B B 2 



