422 Dr. Nils Olof Hoist — The Ice Age in England. 



K. A. von Zittel has remarked that between the typical mammalian 

 fauna of the Pliocene age, as found in the Val d'Arno, in Auvergne, 

 and in the Montpellier district, and that which characterizes the 

 older Pleistocene, there is intercalated a passage fauna, which for 

 the most part agrees with the latter, but contains besides the following 

 five species, namely, Eleplias meridionalis, Rhinoceros etruscus, Ursus 

 arvernensis, and the two species of Cervus, C. Sedgwicki and C. verti- 

 cornis. Among places where this passage fauna is to be found is 

 mentioned especially the Cromer Forest Bed, but also the French 

 localities Saint Prest, Chagny, and Durfort, as well as some Italian 

 localities. Here, then, appears to be a new division of time, as is 

 maintained also by W. Boyd Dawkins, when he characterizes the 

 Cromer Forest Bed as the period " when the Mammalia were migrating 

 from Northern Asia" (and he might have added " and from Northern 

 Africa") "into Europe in the pre-glacial or early stage of the 

 Pleistocene period". 1 



The immigration into Europe of this late Pliocene or older Pleistocene 

 mammalian fauna corresponds, as Yon Zittel remarks, to a similar 

 migration from North into South America and from South into 

 North America. 



In particular reference to the immigrating European fauna, he 

 remarks that it required "together with a more temperate climate" 

 also " an abundant vegetation ", which in its turn must have required 

 an abundant rainfall. During the preceding Pliocene times conditions 

 had been otherwise. Then "large freshwater lakes were absent", 

 that is to say, the rainfall was then less abundant. 2 This finds 

 confirmation also in England, where the land and freshwater molluscs 

 of the Pliocene are not known from freshwater deposits, but from the 

 marine deposits of the Crag in which they have been embedded. 



If Von Zittel's limitation of Pliocene time be retained, it may be 

 definitely stated that it was towards its close that Europe became 

 subjected to pluvial conditions, inducing a richer vegetation, which 

 attracted the large and small herbivorous mammals; and that they in 

 their turn attracted the large and small carnivores, as well as man, 

 who, in a certain sense, may be regarded as the largest carnivore, 

 since he lived on all the other animals. Thus man's contemporaneous 

 appearance in Europe receives its full explanation. 



The question of man's first appearance at the beginning of the 

 pluvial epoch receives further elucidation from the following facts. 



The English Cromer Biver must not be considered as an isolated 

 example. There was also in the South of Sweden a very large, 

 approximately contemporaneous river, the so-called Alnarpsfloden, 

 which ran down from East Prussia over the southernmost part of 

 Sweden, and then up to the " Norwegian trough". The oldest and 

 deepest river-deposits in the valleys of the Elbe and Weser also 

 appear to be approximately contemporaneous. All these rivers. 



1 W. Boyd Dawkins, 1903. " On the discovery of an Ossiferous Cavern of 

 Pliocene Age at Doveholes, Buxton (Derbyshire) " : Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, 

 vol. 59, pp. 105-32. See p. 122. 



a K. A. von Zittel, 1895. Grundzilge der Palaeontologie. See pp. 946, 

 947, 944. 



