1650 THE STORY OF THE UNIVERSE 



extinct species of reindeer and hippopotamus along 

 with mammoth and woolly rhinoceros. 



The geographical change in Northern Europe at 

 the close of the forest-bed age was very great. The 

 forest of the North Sea sank beneath the waves, and 

 Britain was depressed to a depth of no less than 2,300 

 feet in the Welsh Mountains, and was reduced to an 

 archipelago of islands, composed of what are now the 

 higher lands. The area of the English Channel was 

 also depressed, and the "silver streak" was wider than 

 it is now, as is proved by the raised beach at Brighton, 

 at Brackelsham, and elsewhere, which marks the sea- 

 line of the largest island of the archipelago, the 

 Southern Island, as it may be termed, the northern 

 shores of which extended along a line passing from 

 Bristol to London. The northern shore of the Con- 

 tinent at this time extended eastward from Abbe- 

 ville, north of the Erzgebirge, through Saxony and 

 Poland, into the middle of Russia, Scandinavia being 

 an island from which the glaciers descended into the 

 sea. This geographical change was accompanied by 

 a corresponding change in climate. Glaciers de- 

 scended from the higher mountains to the sea level, 

 and icebergs, melting as they passed southward, de- 

 posited their burdens of clay and sand which occupy 

 such a wide area in the portions then submerged of 

 Britain and the Continent. This depression was fol- 

 lowed by a re-elevation, by which the British Isles, 

 a part of the Continent, all the large tract of country 

 within the loo-fathom line, again became the feed- 

 ing-grounds of the late Pleistocene mammalia. 



An appeal to the animals associated with the River- 



