436 



NATURE 



\Au%ust 31, 1882 



other. The forest was mainly composed of sombre Scotch firs 

 and dark clustering yews, relieved in the summer by the lighter 

 tinted foliage of the spruce and the oak, and in the winter by 

 the silvery gleam of the birches, that clustered thickly with the 

 alders in the marshes, and stood out from a dense undergrowth of 

 sloes and hazels. Among the animals living in this forest of the 

 North Sea were sj ecies which haunted the valleys of the upper 

 Seine at the time, such as the southern elephant, the Etruscan 

 rhinoceros, the deer of the Carnutes, extinct horses, and the 

 large extinct beaver. There were in addition the shaggy-inaned 

 mammoth, the straight-tusked elephant, and the big-nosed 

 rhinoceros. The stair, the roe, the Irish elk, were in the glades, 

 Sedgwick's deer, with its many-pointed antlers, the verticorn 

 deer, and the gigantic urus. The undergrowth formed a covert 

 for the wild boar, and for beasts of prey, many in species and 

 formidable in numbers. The cave bear, the hugest of its kind, 

 the sabre-toothed lion, the wolf, the fox, and the wolverine. 

 Among the smaller animals were to be noted the musk shrew-, 

 the common shrew, and a vole. In the trees were squirrels. 

 Under foot the moles raised their hillocks of earth, and fro a 

 between the lofty fronds of the Osmund royal beavers were to be 

 seen building their lodges, and the hippopotamus as he emerged 

 from the water and disappeared in the forest. Out of thirty 

 species identified, no less than seventeen are living in some part 

 of the world, and we have there obviously the stage in the evolu- 

 tion of mammalian life when the living species were becoming 

 more abundant than the extinct. We may note, too, the 

 absence of arctic animals in this fauna, more particularly of the 

 reindeer. 



The presence of these animals in Norfolk and Suffolk implies 

 that at this time Britain was united to the Continent, and the 

 presence of fossil species found in France indicate a southern 

 extension of land in the direction of the Straits of Dover. The 

 forest covered a large portion of the area of the North Sea, and 

 in all probability the Atlantic seaboard was then at the 100- 

 fathom line of the west coast of Ireland. 



No traces of man have as yet been discovered in these deposits, 

 although the large percentage of living species of higher Mam- 

 malia indicates that the geological clock had struck the hour when 

 he may be looked for. 



The Appearance of the River-drift Hunter at Crayford and 

 Erith. — The living species in the forest bed are to be looked 

 upon as an advauced guard of a great migration of Asiatic and 

 Afnc in species, finding their uay into North-western Europe, 

 over the plains of Russia, and over barriers of land connecting 

 Northern Africa with Spain by way of Gibraltar, and with Italy 

 by way of M ilia and Sicily (see "Cave Hunting and Early Man"). 

 In the course of time the other living species followed, and 

 extinct species became more rare. In the deposits, for instance, 

 of the ancient Thames, at Illord and Grays Thurrock in Essex, 

 and at Erith and Crayford in Kent, out of twenty-six species, six 

 only belong to extinct forms — the new-comers comprising the 

 lion, wild cat, spotted hyena, and otter, the bisjn, and the musk 

 sheep. A flint flake discovered by the Rev. Osmund Fisher, at 

 Crayford, and a second discovered by Messrs. Cheadle and Wood- 

 ward, at Erith, prove that man was present in the valley of the 

 Thames at this time ; while the more recent disc weries of Mr. 

 Flaxman Spurrell indicate the very spots where the pala- Tthic 

 hunter made his implements, and prove that he used implements 

 of the River-drift type, so widely distributed over the surface of 

 the earth. The arctic animals at this time were present, but not 

 in full force, in Southern Britain, and the innumerable reindeer 

 which characterise the later deposits of the Pleistocene age had 

 not, so far as we know, taken possession of the valley of the 

 Thames. 



To what stage in the Pleistocene period are we to refer these 

 traces of the River-drift hunter? The only answer which I am 

 able to give is that the associated animals are intermediate between 

 the Forest-bed group and that which characterises the lale Pleis- 

 tocene division in the region extending from the Alps and the 

 Pyrenees as far north as Yorkshire. Nor am I able to form an 

 opinion about their relation to the submergence of Middle or 

 Northern Britain under the waves of the glacial sea. They are 

 quite as likely to be pre- as post- glacial. 



The Relation of the River-drift Hunter of the late Pleistocene to 

 the Glacial Submergence. — The rudely chipped implements of the 

 River-drift hunter lie scattered through the late Pleistocene river 

 deposits in Southern and Eastern England in enormous abundance, 

 and as a rule in association with the remains of animals of arctic 

 and of warm habit, as well as some or other of the extinct species 



of reindeer and hippopotamus, along with mammoth and woolly 

 rhinoceros. What is their relation to the submergence of the 

 land and the lowness of the temperature, which combined to- 

 gether have resulted in the local phenomena known as glacial 

 and interglacial ? 



The geographical change in Northern Europe at the close of 

 the Forest-bed age was very great. The forest of the North Sea 

 sank beneath the waves, and Britain was depressed to a depth of 

 no less than 2,300 feet in the Welsh mountains, and was reduced 

 to an archipelago of islands, composed of what are now the higher 

 lands. The area of the English Channel also was depressed, and 

 the "silver streak" was somewhat wider than it is now, as is 

 proved by the raised beach at Brighton, at Bracklesham, and 

 elsewhere, which marks the sea line of the largest island of the 

 archipelago, the southern island, as it may be termed, the northern 

 shores of which extended along a line passing from Bristol to 

 London. The northern shore of the Continent at this time ex- 

 tended eastwards from Abbeville north of the Erzgebirge, through 

 Saxony and Poland, into the middle of Russia, Scandinavia being 

 an island from which the glaciers descended into the sea. 



This geographical change was accompanied by a corresponding 

 change in climate. Glaciers descended from the higher moun- 

 tains to the sea level, and icebergs, melting as they passed 

 southwards, deposited their burdens of clay, sand, and erratics, 

 which occupy such a wide area in the portions then submerged 

 of Britain and the Continent. 



This depression was followed by a re-elevation, by which the 

 British Isles, again formed a part of the Continent, and all the 

 large tract of country within the 100-fathom line again became 

 the feeding-grounds of the late Pleistocene Mammalia. 



An appeal to the animals associated with the River-drift imple- 

 ments will not help us to fix the exact relation of man to these 

 changes, because they were in Britain bef jre as well as after the 

 submergence, and were living throughout in those parts of Europe 

 which were not submerged. It can only be done in areas where 

 the submergence is clearly defined. At Salisbury, for instance, 

 the River-drift hunter may have lived either before, during, or 

 after the southern counties became an island. When, however, 

 he hunted the woolly and leptorhine rhinoceros, the mammoth, 

 and the horse in the neighbourhood of Brighton, he 1 joked down 

 upon a broad expanse of sea, in the spring flecked with small 

 icebergs, such as those which dropped their burdens in Brackle- 

 sham Bay. At Abbeville, too, he hunted the mammoth, rein- 

 deer, and horse down to the mouth of the Somme on the shore 

 of the glacial sea. 



The'evidence is equally clear that the River-drift hunter fol- 

 lowed the chase in Britain after it had emerged from beneath the 

 waters of the glacial sea, from the fact that the river deposits in 

 which his implements occur either re^t upon the glacial clay>, or 

 are composed of fragments derived from them, as in the oft- 

 quoted cases of Hoxne and Bedford, further, it is very probable 

 that he may have wandered close up to the edges of the glaciers 

 then covering the higher hills of Wales and the Pennine chain. 



The severity of the climate in winter at this time in liritain is 

 proved, not merely by the presence of the arctic animals, but by 

 the numerous ice-borne blocks in the river gravels dropped in the 

 spring after the break-up of the frosts. 



The Range of the River-drift Man on the Continent and in 

 the Mediterranean Area — The River-drift man is proved, by the 

 implements which he left behind, to have wandered over the 

 wh ile of France, and to have hunted the same animals in the 

 valleys of the Loire and the Garonne as in the valley of the 

 Thames. In the Iberian peninsula he was a contemporary of 

 the African elephant, the mammoth, and the straight-tucked 

 elephant, and he occupied the neighbourhood b ith of Madrid 

 and Lisbon. He also ranged over Italy, leaving traces of his 

 presence in the Abruzzo, and in Greece he was a c intemporary 

 of the extinct pigmy hippopotamus (//. Pentlmiii). ^outh of 

 the Mediterranean his implements have been mel with in Oran, 

 and near Kolea in Algeria, and in Egypt in several localities. 

 At Luxor they have been discovered by General Pitt-Rivers in 

 the breccia, out of which are hewn the tombs of the kings. In 

 Palestine they have been obtained by the Abbt ! Ki.'hard between 

 Mount Tabor and the sea of Tiberias, and by Mr. Slopes between 

 Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Throughout this wide area the im- 

 plements, for the most part of flint or of quartzite, are of the 

 same rude types, and there is no difference to be n ited between 

 the haches found in the caves of Cresswell in Derbyshire, and those 

 of Thebes, or between those of the valley of the Somme and those 

 of Palestine. Nor is our survey yet ended. 



