2l6 HISTORY OF THE EUROPEAN FAUNA. 



will agree with him that the climate of Siberia must 

 have been greatly moister in pliocene and pleistocene 

 times than it is now. The Aralo- Caspian covered 

 a vast area of South-western Siberia. Freshwater 

 basins existed along the east of the Ural Mountains, 

 while Central Asia was studded over with a number of 

 large lakes, which have now almost entirely vanished. 

 But that the generally assumed refrigeration of 

 Europe must have had a chilling effect on the 

 Siberian atmosphere seems to me evident. That the 

 whole of Northern Europe should have been made 

 uninhabitable owing to the advance of the Scandi- 

 navian ice-sheet, while North Siberia at the same 

 time supported forests, meadows, and a temperate 

 fauna, is incredible. At the approach of winter, at 

 any rate, the animals would have been driven south- 

 ward for thousands of miles to seek shelter from the 

 snows and cold and to obtain nourishment, and it 

 would scarcely have been possible for them to 

 undertake such vast migrations at every season. 

 Professor James Geikie's suggestion (p. 706), that 

 the Mammoth and Woolly Rhinoceros could have 

 survived the Pleistocene Epoch in Southern Siberia, 

 does not appear to solve the problem, as that part 

 of Asia must have participated in the great cold 

 which is said to have prevailed all over Europe. 



Let us now concede, for the sake of argument, 

 that the current views regarding the pleistocene 

 climate of Europe are correct. We are told by Pro- 

 fessor Geikie that the climate of Scotland during 



