FOOTPRINTS OF VANISHED RACES IN CORNWALL. 279 



of recl-cleer also abounded, tlieir tones being" found in the valley 

 alluvia, and in the submarine forests.^^ Foxes, martens, pole- 

 cats, badgers and otters were numerous, and packs of wolves 

 sweeping through the forests after nightfall, made the woods 

 resound with their dismal bowlings. The contrast between this 

 fauna and that of the Palaeolithic age which immediately pre- 

 ceded it, is remarkable. The Palaeolithic fauna, with a few 

 exceptions,'^ was essentially an African fauna, its leading animals 

 being the lion, hyaena, elephant, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus. 

 The Neolithic fauna is entirely a European fauna, and almost 

 exactly like that which lives in Eurojie to-day, two or three mem- 

 bers only"^ having disappeared. This great contrast is owing to 

 the diluvial catastrophe which occurred at the end of the Palaeo- 

 lithic age, and brought about an extraordinary change in the 

 fauna of the whole of Europe and America. 



Sir John Evans has said*' that owing to climatical changes, 

 failure of food, and other causes, the occupation of Western 

 Europe by man ceased with the close of the Palaeolithic age, and 

 it was only after a long period that men again entered it, having 

 immigrated from a distant part of the world. Dr. J. A. Geikie, 

 also, has declared*^^ that in the early Neolithic age, all Western 

 Europe was uninhabited by man. AVith this view I entirely 

 agree. The convulsions and aqueous debacles, which closed the 

 Palaeolithic age, left vast tracts of Northern Europe empty and 

 desolate, and it was a long time before these regions could be 

 re-peopled, by men and beasts, from other parts of the world 

 which had escaped devastation. 



63. The bones of the reindeer, red-deer, bison, and wild bull have all been 

 found in the Neolithic beds at Carnon and Pentuan. See Mr. R. Q Couch's paper in 

 Transactions of the Roy a I Geological Society of Cornwall, vol. vii, pp. 265, 266. For the 

 bones of the reindeer which were found in the submarine forest in Barnstaple bay- 

 see Report of the Norwich Congress on Prehistoric Archceology, for 1868, p. 89. There 

 is also a local tradition that the wood used in the construction of the church at 

 Braunton was drawn to the churchyard by reindeer. See Student, vol. iv, p. 343 ; also 

 Transactions of the Devonshire Association, vol. ii, p. 163 [1867]. Mr. J. M. Hall is the 

 avithor of these statements. 



64. Such as the musk-ox, gUitton and lemming. 



65. Such as the Irish elk, urus. 



65. Address to the British Association at Toronto, 1897, p. 15. 

 67. Prehistoric Europe, p. 554. 



