CHAP. xix. LOCAL CHANGES IN PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 375 



enemies, than that they failed to bring about their speedy 

 extinction. 



It is already clear that Man was contemporary in Europe 

 with two species of elephant, E.primigenius and E. antiquus, 

 two, also, of rhinoceros, R. tichorhinus and R. hemitcecus 

 (Falc.), at least one species of hippopotamus, the cave-bear, 

 cave-lion, and cave-hyaena, various bovine, equine, and cer 

 vine animals now extinct, and many smaller carnivora, 

 rodentia, and insectivora. While these were slowly passing 

 away, the musk buffalo, reindeer, and other arctic species, 

 which have survived to our times, were retreating northwards, 

 from the valleys of the Thames and Seine, to their present 

 more arctic haunts. 



The human skeletons of the Belgian caverns of times co 

 eval with the mammoth and other extinct mammalia, do not 

 betray any signs of a marked departure in their structure, 

 whether of skull or limb, from the modern standard of certain 

 living races of the human family. As to the remarkable 

 Neanderthal skeleton (Ch. V. p. 75), it is at present too iso 

 lated and exceptional, and its age too uncertain, to warrant 

 us in relying on its abnormal and ape-like characters, as 

 bearing on the question whether the farther back we 

 trace Man into the past, the more we shall find him approach 

 in bodily conformation to those species of the anthropoid 

 quadrumana which are most akin to him in structure. 



In the descriptions* already given of the geographical 

 changes which the British Isles have undergone since the 

 commencement of the glacial period (as illustrated by several 

 maps, pp. 276-279), it has been shown that there must have 

 been a free communication by land between the Continent 

 and these islands, and between the several islands themselves, 

 within the Post-pliocene epoch, in order to account for the 

 Germanic fauna and flora having migrated into every part of 

 the area, as well as for the Scandinavian plants and animals 



