134 EARLY MAN IN BRITAIN. [CHAP. vi. 



leave the question open, to be solved by future dis- 

 coveries, with the remark that in this case there is no 

 inherent improbability of its being answered in the 

 affirmative, as in the alleged cases of man's presence 

 in more ancient deposits, since numerous mammalia 

 now living in Europe were then in possession of the 

 land- 



The Mid- Pleistocene Mammalia. 



A group of animals, differing in many important par- 

 ticulars from the above, has been met with at Ilford and 

 Grays Thurrock in Essex, at Erith and Crayford in Kent, 

 and at Clacton on the Essex coast. They differ from 

 the early Pleistocene group chiefly in the absence of most 

 of the Pleiocene survivals, as well as by the incoming of 

 species hitherto unknown, among which man is to be 

 reckoned. 



The extraordinary mixture of forms will be seen from 

 the examination of the following table, in which the 

 survivals have been separated from the newcomers, con- 

 stituting fifteen out of a total of twenty-six species. The 

 extraordinary deer of the Forest-bed are no longer to be 

 seen, and the Etruskan rhinoceros has been replaced 

 by the leptorhine or small-nosed rhinoceros of Owen. 

 The woolly rhinoceros, the companion of the mammoth 

 in its wanderings from the steppes of northern Siberia 

 as far south as the Alps and Pyrenees, appears for the 

 first time. It must also be remarked that the valley of 

 the lower Thames is the only place known where the 

 woolly and leptorhine rhinoceros are found side by side 

 with the big-nosed species. The southern elephant, which 

 survived from the Pleiocene into the early Pleistocene 

 stage, is no longer present, and had either become extinct 



