82 THE EAETH. 



" A savage bear, surpassing the Ursus ferox of the Rocky 

 Mountains, found its hiding-place, like the hyaena, in many 

 of the existing limestone caverns of England. With the 

 Ursus spoelus was associated another bear, more like the 

 common European species, but larger than the present 

 individuals of the Ursus Arctas. Wolves and foxes, the 

 badger, the otter, the foumart, and the stoat, complete 

 the category of known pliocene carnivora of Britain." 



In the time of these the last of the tertiary strata, there 

 appear evidences of a degree of cold much greater than at 

 present exists ; this seems to be pretty well proved by the 

 " boulder formation," or prevalence of erratic blocks of stone, 

 the progress of which have been traced from their sources of 

 origin to hundreds of miles distant, and there is no con- 

 ceivable power which could have carried them but the 

 floating fields of ice or glaciers ; both of these sources are 

 capable of this removal, for it is not uncommon to find large 

 pieces of rock and layers of gravel floating on masses of ice. 

 Griaciers are formed by the snow on the sides of mountains 

 becoming hardened by being partially melted and again 

 frozen, and at every melting the fluid tends to descend, when 

 it again becomes 'frozen, always adding to the lower part 

 and carrying away from the upper. In this way whole 

 glaciers of many miles extent become unfixed, and as fresh 

 snows are added to their upper parts, they descend slowly, 

 entangling with them and tearing away the rocks in their 

 vicinity. When they arrive at the sea and float forth, 

 these rocks are borne with them. 



But there are as yet no traces of man, not one small 

 fragment of his skeleton, not one minute relic of his con- 

 structive powers, although the bones of man are as capable 

 of preservation as those of any other animal, being the same 

 in structure and composition ; the remains of hundreds of 

 fragile insects, seeds, leaves, and all sorts of organic 

 structures, are found perfectly preserved (fig. 34) . The only 

 way, therefore, of accounting for the absence of any organic 

 remains of man, is the assumption that he was not then 

 created ; and this is confirmed by the fact that in the very 

 uppermost layers of the earth's surface his bones and the 



