144 COLIN CLOUT'S CALENDAR. 



and the ibex, which at present inhabit only the higher 

 ranges of the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Sierra Nevada, or 

 the Caucasus. There they were hunted by the men of 

 the earlier stone period, who used only weapons of 

 chipped flint, unground and unpolished, and who lived 

 for the most part in the limestone caverns now filled in 

 by later accumulations. 



As the climate grew warmer, however, after the 

 clearing away of the ice, the temperate fauna began 

 once more to replace the arctic or sub-arctic kinds in 

 Britain and Germany. The cold period when these 

 northern species ranged over the whole central belt of 

 Europe corresponds roughly with the age of the palaeo- 

 lithic cave-men : with the post-glacial neolithic or pre- 

 historic age we find a gradual and continuous retreat 

 northward of the animals adapted to colder habitats. 

 In the earlier neolithic days the moose and the reindeer 

 were still found as far south as Yorkshire : by the dawn 

 of the historical period they were extinct in England, 

 though the Scandinavian jarls of Orkney still hunted 

 reindeer among the straths of Caithness as late as the 

 middle of the twelfth century. During the first period, 

 too, both the blue hare and the common hare ranged 

 together over the plains of England ; but as time went 

 on and the climate became milder the northern species 

 retreated to the Scotch hills, where it found a more 

 congenial atmosphere, leaving the southern plains and 

 valleys entirely to the occupation of its ruddy ally. In 

 the same way the blue hares of Germany also became 

 extinct ; and so the species was reduced to three isolated 

 groups — one in Scotland, one in Switzerland, and one 

 large connected body in northern Europe and Siberia. 



