

494 EARLY MAN IN BRITAIN. [CHAP. xiv. 



in the twelfth century in the river Teivi. The wild boar 

 disappeared from England before the reign of Charles 

 the First, 1 and lingered in the waste lands of Ireland 

 into the next century. The reindeer was hunted by the 

 jarls of Orkney in the remote north in Caithness 2 as 

 late as the year 1159, while Henry the Second occupied 

 the throne of England, and Alexander Neckam was 

 writing his history. The gradual disappearance of these 

 animals marks the increase of population, the cutting 

 down of forests, the drainage of morasses, the multi- 

 plication of roads, by which man became master of the 

 whole of the British Isles. 



Conclusion. 



It remains for us to sum up the principal results 

 of our enquiry into Early Man in Britain. The suc- 

 cession of events from the beginning to the end of 

 the Tertiary period has been treated ; a succession 

 in which each stage is intimately connected with 

 that which went before and followed after. In the 

 Eocene and Meiocene ages our islands formed part -of 

 a continent extending northwards to Iceland, Spitz- 

 bergen, and Greenland, with a warm climate and a 

 luxuriant vegetation, inhabited by wild beasts belong- 

 ing to extinct species. As none of the mammalia 

 then alive are now living, it is unreasonable to sup- 

 pose that man, the most highly specialised of all, 

 should then have been on the earth. Nor is it likely 



1 He attempted to re-introduce them from the Continent. 



2 " Hreina," in the OrJcneyinga Saga. For a criticism on this see Pop. 

 Science Rev., 1868, p. 42, and Proceed. Soc. Antiq. Scot. viii. p. 1, 1869. 



