362 HISTORICAL PALAEONTOLOGY. 



the South American continent namely, the " Platyrhine " 

 Monkeys. 



We still have very briefly to consider the occurrence of 

 Man in Post-Pliocene deposits ; but before doing so, it will be 

 well to draw attention to the evidence afforded by the Post- 

 Pliocene Mammals as to the climate of Western Europe at 

 this period. The chief point which we have to notice is, that 

 a considerable revolution of opinion has taken place on this 

 point. It was originally believed that the presence of such 

 animals as Elephants, Lions, the Rhinoceros, and the Hippo- 

 potamus afforded an irrefragable proof that the climate of 

 Europe must have been a warm one, at any rate during Post- 

 Glacial times. The existence, also, of numbers of Mammoths 

 in Siberia, was further supposed to indicate that this high tem- 

 perature extended itself very far north. Upon the whole, how- 

 ever, the evidence is against this view. Not only is there great 

 difficulty in supposing that the Arctic conditions of the Glacial 

 period were immediately followed by anything warmer than a 

 cold-temperate climate ; but there is nothing in the nature of 

 the Mammals themselves which would absolutely forbid their 

 living in a temperate climate. The Hippopotamus major, though 

 probably clad in hair, offers some difficulty since, as pointed 

 out by Professor Busk, it must have required a climate suffi- 

 ciently warm to insure that the rivers were not frozen over in the 

 winter ; but it was probably a migratory animal, and its occur- 

 rence may be accounted for by this. The Woolly Rhinoceros 

 and the Mammoth are known with certainty to have been pro- 

 tected with a thick covering of wool and hair ; and their ex- 

 tension northwards need not necessarily have been limited by 

 anything except the absence of a sufficiently luxuriant vege- 

 tation to afford them food. The great American Mastodon, 

 though not certainly known to have possessed a hairy covering, 

 has been shown to have lived upon the shoots of Spruce and 

 Firs, trees characteristic of temperate regions as shown by the 

 undigested food which has been found with its skeleton, oc- 

 cupying the place of the stomach. The Lions and Hyaenas, 

 again, as shown by Professor Boyd Dawkins, do not indicate 

 necessarily a warm climate. Wherever a sufficiency of her- 

 bivorous animals to supply them with food can live, there they 

 can live also ; and they have therefore no special bearing upon 

 the question of climate. After a review of the whole evidence, 

 Professor Dawkins concludes that the nearest approach at the 

 present day to the Post-Pliocene climate of Western Europe 

 is to be found in the climate of the great Siberian plains which 

 stretch from the Altai Mountains to the Frozen Sea. "Covered 



