CHAPTEll XIII. 



CLOSE OP THE POST-PLIOCENE, AND ADVENT OF MAW. 



(Continued.) 



TURNING from these difficult questions of time, we 

 may now look at the assemblage of land-animals 

 presented by the Post-glacial period. Here, for the 

 first time in the great series of continental eleva- 

 tions and depressions, we find the newly-emerging 

 land peopled with familiar forms. Nearly all the 

 modern European animals have left their bones in 

 the clays, gravels, and cavern deposits which belong 

 to this period; but with them are others either not 

 now found within the limits of temperate Europe, 

 or altogether extinct. Thus the remarkable fact 

 comes out, that the uprising land was peopled at 

 first with a more abundant fauna than that which 

 it now sustains, and that many species, and among 

 these some of the largest and most powerful, have 

 been weeded out, either before the advent of man 

 or in the changes which immediately succeeded that 

 event. That in the Post-glacial period so many 

 noble animal species should have been overthrown 

 in the struggle for existence, without leaving any 

 successors, at least in Europe, is one of the most 

 remarkable phenomena in the history of life on our 

 planet. 



