600 BEPORT— 1882. 



■west as Ireland. Among tlie southern animals, too, must be reckoned the hippo- 

 potamus, which lived as far north as Britain in the Pleiocene age, and in the 

 Pleistocene occurs in caves and river-deposits, in intimate association with some 

 arctic species, such as the remdeer. 



The fifth group is composed of extinct species, hitherto unknown in Europe 

 in the Pleistocene age, such as — 



The straight-tusked elephant, mammoth, the pigmy elephants, woolly and small- 

 nosed rhinoceroses, the Irish elk, pigmj^ hippopotamus, and the cave hear. 



The question as to which of these groups the River-drift man belongs must he 

 deferred till we can take a survey of the evidence elsewhere. 



The early Pleistocene division is characterised by the presence of the temperate 

 and southern species in Britain ; the middle stage hj the presence of the arctic, 

 but not in full force ; and the late Pleistocene by the abundance of arctic animals, 

 not only in Britain, but on the Continent as far as the Alps and Pyrenees, and the 

 lower valley of the Danube. 



The EaELT PLEISTOCElfE FOEEST AND MAMMALS OF EaST AnGLIA. 



The first view which we get of the Pleistocene IMammaha in this coimtry is 

 offered by the accumulations associated with the buried forest of East Anglia. It 

 extends for more than 40 miles along the shores of Norfolk and Suflblk, from 

 Cromer to Kessingland, passing into the cliff" on the one hand and beneath the sea 

 on the 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 

 species 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-maned 

 mammoth, the straight-tusked elephant, and the big-nosed rhinoceros. The stag, 

 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 

 niunbers: the cave bear, the hugest of its kind, the sabre-toothed lion, the wolf, 

 the fox, and the wolverine, iimong the smaller animals were to be noted the musk 

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

 the moles raised their hillocks of earth, and from between the lofty fronds of the 

 king-fern 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 evolution 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 Suflblk implies that at this time 

 Britain was united to the Continent, and the presence of fossil species found in 

 France indicates 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 lOO-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 Mammalia indicates that the geological 

 clock had struck the hour when he may be looked for. 



The Appearance of the River-drift Hunter at Cratford and Eeith. 



The living species in the forest-bed are to be looked upon as an advanced guard 

 of a great migration of Asiatic and African species, finding their way into North- 

 western Eiu-ope, over the plains of Russia, and over barriers of land connecting 



