130 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 
mammals are probably enough to show the nature of the climate and the local 
conditions under which they lived. The contemporary geological changes, 
though small, likewise help in explaining migrations and perhaps some 
extinctions ; while the peculiar circumstances of the Great Ice Age, under 
which early man flourished in the northern hemisphere, varied so much 
from time to time, that they have been used in forming a plausible chrono- 
logy. Asa palzontologist and a geologist, therefore, I propose to discuss 
some of the latest developments of prehistory. 
It has long been recognised that the earliest men of which traces have 
been found in Europe did not originate on this continent but were 
immigrants from some other region. Western Europe, at least, was a 
kind of refuge to which successive races retreated. It is thus important 
to examine the numerous associated mammals to ascertain whence they 
came ; for most of these mammals seem also to have been immigrants to 
Europe just before or during the Pleistocene period when man began to 
live here, and they may give a clue to his origins. 
Sir W. Boyd Dawkins was one of the first to take a broad view of the 
mammals which accompanied the successive races of early man in Europe, 
and he eventually published a map to illustrate their mixed origin. In 
addition to some which were already in the middle of the European 
continent, others seemed to have come south from the Arctic regions, 
others had passed directly west from the middle of Asia, while a few 
could only be explained as having come north from Africa over old land 
bridges to Gibraltar and southern Italy. ‘These mammals might not all 
have lived together, but they at least showed how varied were the routes 
open to the movements of primitive men. 
It now appears that the tracing of the warmer types of mammals to an 
African source was a mistake. It was due to the erroneous reference of 
certain fossil elephant teeth from Spain and Sicily to the existing African 
species, and to the wrong idea that the dwarf elephants found fossil in 
Malta were closely related to the same species. It was also supported by 
the fact that the cave hyzena of Europe proved to be identical with the 
spotted hyzena, which at present lives only in Africa to the south of the 
Sahara. Recent researches seem to have proved that during the Pleisto- 
cene period there was no direct communication between Europe and 
Africa, either through Gibraltar or through Sicily and Malta. Geologists 
are satisfied that certain shells which are characteristic of northern seas 
could not have entered the Mediterranean to be found there in Pleistocene 
sea beaches if the Straits of Gibraltar had not been open. Others have 
remarked that among the numerous remains of mammals which occur in 
some of the caves at Gibraltar, there is nothing distinctly African. Dr. 
Raymond Vaufrey has more recently examined the fossil mammals and 
stone implements found in the caves and other Pleistocene deposits of 
Sicily and Malta, and he shows clearly that although these islands 
were connected with Italy at the time, they never had an extension to 
Africa. 
The supposition that Sicily and Malta are remnants of a former land 
bridge between Europe and Africa has been so widely accepted that 
Dr. Vaufrey’s conclusions need to be emphasised. There is no doubt 
