66 EARLY MAN IN BRITAIN. [CHAP. HI. 



One severe winter would have destroyed the evergreen 

 forests, and the exotic plants and animals would disappear 

 and be replaced by others capable of flourishing under 

 the new conditions. The blocks of stone may have been 

 carried down by glaciers from the Alpine chain, then 

 lifted high up above the sea into the icy temperature 

 which is to be met with everywhere on the earth at 

 great altitudes. They may be referred to that glacial 

 climate which is above our head even at the equator, 

 rather than to glacial conditions extending down to the 

 sea-level in Italy, in a period when the climate of middle 

 ano\ northern Europe was warmer than it is now a 

 period, moreover, in which, if Professor Heer's views be 

 accepted, even in the Arctic Eegions, it was sufficiently 

 mild to allow the spruces, elms, and hazels, the hem- 

 locks and swamp cypresses to flourish in Grinnell Land, 

 almost as far north as latitude 82 , 1 and the vine, wal- 

 nut, tulip tree, and mammoth tree to grow luxuriantly 

 in Iceland. 



No Proof of Man in Europe in the Meiocene Age. 



Was man an inhabitant of Europe in the Meiocene 

 age ? Did he wander through the evergreen forests and 

 hunt the deer, antelopes, and hogs, the Hipparions, 

 Mastodons, and Deinotheres, then so numerous ? The 

 climate was favourable, and the food, animal and vege- 

 table, was most abundant. The representatives of the 

 higher apes were present in Germany, Switzerland, 

 France, Italy, and Greece, and all the conditions were 

 satisfied which have been put forward by Dr. Falconer 

 and Sir John Lubbock as necessary to that primeval 



1 SeeHeer, Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. Lond. xxxiv. p. 66, and. Flora Arctica. 



