84 BOS PRIMIGENIUS. 







joined to Scotland and the Isle of Man, so that the land was much 

 above its present level, and at least 30 fathoms higher. Not only 

 was the land of Europe generally higher, but the shores of the 

 North Sea and Atlantic were then washed by cold currents instead 

 of the warm Gulf Stream, which did not then reach the shores 

 of Britain or of Norway. Palaeolithic man dismembered the game 

 that they killed, and carried to their cave-homes only the choice 

 pieces, such as the head and limbs ; they valued the head for the 

 brain and tongue, and possibly for the teeth, the limbs for their 

 flesh and marrow. They were able to kill the elephant, rhinoceros, 

 lion, and bear, and could also capture the chamois and wild goat. 

 As many as 135 species of mammals have been catalogued as 

 contemporaneous in Europe and Northern Asia with the mammoth 

 and Palaeolithic man. They include nearly all the species now 

 inhabiting those countries, of which some, like the mammoth, 

 are extinct, others locally so that is, existing beyond the 

 European territory. Of the latter, some, like the musk-ox, have 

 retired to the extreme north, while others, like the hippopotamus 

 and hyaena, have retreated southward. The great subsidence of 

 land closed the Palaeolithic age, and with it disappeared several of 

 the large mammalia. The modern gravels, earths, and loess spread 

 over hill ard dale far above the reach of present floods must have 

 been brought about by an unusual action of masses of diluvial 

 water. "The loess, which Sir C. Lyell calls inundation-mud, is 

 the last and latest of all the great formations known to geology, 

 and covers a large part of Central Europe. The shells it contains 

 are terrestrial land-shells of damp woods, and morasses of a land- 

 surface which had been covered with this inundation-mud, the 

 result of a great depression and a re-emergence of the land 

 towards the close of the glacial epoch." Duke of Argyll, Con- 

 temporary Review. This inundation, flood, or deluge, which was 

 connected with the disappearance of man and many of the 

 large animals of that period, was followed by the appearance of 

 Neolithic man with modern animals, whose descendants still 

 survive. It extended up to very high levels all over the old 



