PLEISTOCENE OF EUROPE, NORTH AFRICA, AND NORTH AMERICA 397 



identical with the present.^ The spruce forests (Abies) for the first time 

 appear in Great Britain, in the Forest Bed. The most striking fact in 

 examining the flora of the Norfolk and Suffolk coasts of England is its 

 correspondence with the modern flora, in spite of the immense period of 

 time that has elapsed and the great changes in climate during which all 

 these plants were driven out and then permitted to return. "However," 

 continues Reid, "though very similar, we find in the fossil flora several 

 exotic species which give it a slightly different character, and we notice also 

 the absence of several modern forms." 



Characteristic Lower Pleistocene Mammals 

 This fauna as a whole is an outlier of the African, Asiatic group, with a 

 strong northerly, or Eurasiatic, forest element intermingled. The reindeer 

 is not present and the musk ox (Ovibos), if its presence be confirmed, is 

 the only ruminant which can be said to give the Forest Bed a distinctively 

 arctic character. 



Elephants. — The southern elephant (E. meridionalis) of the times be- 

 longs to a somewhat more advanced type than that of the Upper Pliocene 

 of the Val d'Arno. The Forest Bed specimens are, in fact, attributed by 

 Pohlig^ to the mid-Pleistocene species E. trogontherii. The southern elephant 

 is best known from the magnificent specimen found at Durfort, France, and 

 mounted under the direction of Gauclry in the Paris Museum; the height 

 at the shoulders is 3.83 m., or 12 ft., 9i in. The following compar- 

 ison of the relative heights of the great Pleistocene and recent elephants is 

 based, so far as the extinct forms are concerned, on a series of approximations, 

 because it is very difficult to measure the height of these animals from the 

 skeleton. 



Estimated height at shoulder • 



E. imperator, the imperial mammoth of North 



America 

 The straight-tusked elephant, E. antiquus of Europe 

 The southern elephant of Europe, E. meridionalis 

 The largest living African elephants, E. africanus 

 The Columbian mammoth of North America, E. 



columbi 

 The Indian elephant of Asia, E. indicus 

 The true or northern mammoth, E. primigenius 

 The living pigmy elephant of the Congo, E. cydotis 



pumilio 

 The dwarfed elephant of Crete (E. creticus), Malta 



(E. melitensis), and Cyprus 

 The American mastodon. Mastodon americanus 



' Rcid, C, and Reid, E. M., The Pre-Glaoial Flora of Britain. Jour. Linn. Soc, Botany, 

 Vol. XXXVIII. .Jan., 1908, pp. 206-227. 



^ Pohlig, Uber Elephas trogontherii in England. Monatsher. Deutsch. Geol. Gcs., Vol. 61. 

 1909, no. 5, pp. 242-249. 



' These figures are taken from Osborn, from Andrews' m(>nioir, from estimates by F. A. 

 Lueas, Nature, Sept. 10, 1908, from Pohlig (1907), and from Rowland Ward's Records of Big 

 Game (8vo, London, 1907). •'See below. 



