62 EXTINCT BRITISH ANIMALS. 



This animal was one of the earliest arrivals on 

 British soil after the ice and snow of the glacial 

 epoch began to disappear, and it is in caverns and 

 river gravels and sands of post-glacial age that we 

 first meet with its remains. Its abundance in 

 British deposits of this date is very remarkable. 

 Professor Boyd Dawkins has found portions of its 

 bones and horns in no less than thirteen out of 

 twenty-one caverns examined by him, while the Red- 

 deer was only found in seven ; thus, contrary to what 

 is generally assumed to be the case, the Reindeer 

 predominated in numbers over the Red-deer at the 

 time the British bone caverns were being filled. 



In the post-glacial river deposits the same numeri- 

 cal preponderance of the Reindeer is observed. It 

 has been found in the gravels of Brentford, in a 

 railway cutting at Kew Bridge, and higher up the 

 Thames in a gravel bed at Windsor, where, in the 

 spring of 1867, numerous remains were discovered. 

 On visiting the spot with the discoverer, Capt. 

 Luard, R.E., Professor Boyd Dawkins found that 

 more than one-half of the remains belonged to the 

 Reindeer, the rest to Bisons, Horses, Wolves, and 

 Bears. They had evidently been swept down by 

 the current from some point higher up the stream.* 

 In illustration of this accumulation he quotes a 

 parallel case from the observations of Admiral Yon 

 Wrangel in Siberia, who remarks :f " The migrating 



* " Early Man in Britain," p. 155. 



t " Siberia and the Polar Sea," translated by Major Sabine, 8vo, 

 1840, p. 190. The obviously exaggerated figures must be taken to 

 represent the vast numbers of the animals. 



