162 EARLY MAN IN BRITAIN. [CHAP.VI. 



down beneath the alluvium of the river, many species of 

 mammalia have been discovered along with Palaeolithic 

 implements, proving that the hunter of those times would 

 not be likely to suffer from want of game in Wiltshire. 

 In the spring, summer, and autumn, there were stags, 

 bisons, uri, horses, pouched marmots, woolly rhinoceroses, 

 and mammoths, and in the depth of winter, lemmings, 

 reindeer, and musk sheep. Wild boars were in the 

 woodlands, and hares in the glades. The hunter had, 

 however, formidable beasts of prey, the lion and the 

 spotted hyaena, as his competitors in the chase. In the 

 spring time Fisherton was a nesting-place for the wild 

 goose, and the heavy floods, rushing down the valley 

 of the Wily at the break up of winter, occasionally 

 surprised the marmots before they awoke from their 

 winter's sleep, and sometimes deposited their bodies in 

 the sediment at the bottom of the river. 



The implements in both these localities are oval, 

 pointed, and pear-shaped (see Figs. 33, 37), as well as of 

 the simple flake-like form, the whole group being the 

 same as that of the valley of the Thames. 



Similar traces of man living under similar conditions 

 have been met with in the river- deposits over the greater 

 part of northern and eastern England, from Chard 1 and 

 Axminster on the west, to the Straits of Dover on the 

 east, and from the Bristol Channel as far north as Cam- 

 bridge. They are conspicuous by their absence from 

 the gravels north-west of a line passing through the 

 midland counties from Bristol to the Wash. 2 



1 Evans, Journ. Anthrop. Inst., May 1878. 



2 Mr. Evans' masterly work on Ancient Stone Implements will give the 

 reader the details as to the forms and distribution of the implements in 

 Britain. 



