APPENDIX. 



I HAVE thought it well to put together in an appendix a few 

 remarks upon the flora and fauna of the prehistoric times with 

 which I have been dealing, with the view of supplementing rather 

 than of summarising the already existing and very extensive litera- 

 ture of this subject. Having had numerous opportunities of ex- 

 amining, not merely the collected contents of barrows, but the 

 barrows themselves whilst still containing them in situ, I have 

 come to feel that the history of the prehistoric flora and fauna 

 may have been somewhat analogous to that of the barrows them- 

 selves, and may therefore receive some elucidation from it. Firstly, 

 the barrows survive mainly in parts of the country into which 

 agricultural improvements with their levelling tendencies have not 

 penetrated as thoroughly as they have into less rugged, less hilly, 

 more arable districts. But the same causes which have allowed 

 these sometimes large masses to remain undisturbed may be 

 reasonably supposed to have been equally favourable to the living 

 organisms which were their contemporaries. Secondly, when we 

 come to look at the structure of the barrows in various parts of 

 this country and the character of their manufactured contents, we 

 are impressed with the existence in them of a similarity and uni- 

 formity the more striking as it is not paralleled by any very 

 marked similarity in the analogous human creations of the present 

 day ; whilst it is reproduced more or less closely in the flora and the 

 domesticated fauna of those localities. The sheep, oxen, and swine 

 of the Scotch and Welsh highlands, even if not as closely alike as 

 are the horned cairns of Caithness, of Gloucestershire, and of the 

 Peninsula of Gower (see pp. 536, 537, 702 supra), are nevertheless 

 far from dissimilar; vegetable being more dependent upon inorganic 

 influences than animal life, the flora at present in occupation of 

 those districts may perhaps, when we make allowance for very 

 recent disturbances in the way of planting, be held to be even as 

 exact a reproduction of that which occupied them in neolithic times 



