728 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



however, seem to have maintained a relative height as great as that of to-day, in 

 comparison with the lands about them. The elevated position which Britain had 

 occupied in the Eocene age seems to have been kept up during the Miocene. 

 The whole of Britain ad Ireland, with the English and Irish channels, the Ger- 

 man Ocean, and the Atlantic ridge between Scotland and Greenland, stood at 

 at an average of nearly 3000 feet higher than they do to-day, so that the whole 

 region remained dry land, and Gaul as still joined in this way to Scandinavia and 

 North America. 



Above this high level the Scottish Highlands and the Welsh peaks rose to a 

 height of some 7,000 feet, having since been worn down to half that height by 

 rain and ice. Many of these great mountains, thus standing nearly as high above 

 sea-level as the Alps, were active volcanoes; and this chain of volcanoes, of 

 which Hecla is now the most famous remnant, extended across the Atlantic ridge, 

 all the way from Wales to Greenland, which was then covered with a luxuriant 

 vegetation of oaks and chestnuts, vines and magnolias. In the earlier part of 

 the Miocene age the general chmate of Europe resembled that of Algiers or Louis- 

 iana at the present day, but at the close of the period it had become somewhat 

 cooler, though still subtropical Gigantic conifers, like the famous trees of Cali- 

 fornia, 4oo,feet in height and 25 or more in thickness, flourished all over Europe, 

 from Italy to Norway. Along with these there were cycads, fan-palms, palmet- 

 t( s, figs, laurels and myrtles, poplars, lindens and maples, acacias and elms, 

 camphors and cinnamons and sandalwood ; while ivies and bignonias grew in lux- 

 uriance. Cranes, flamingos, and pelicans were common, as also geese, herons, 

 pheasants, paroquets, and eagles. But the mammals, in this as in the preceding 

 epoch, present the most instructive subject of study. Opossums were still pres- 

 ent, but had vanished before the middle of the period; and a few existing genera 

 of ])lacental mammals had come upon the scene. There were tapirs and small 

 rhinoceroses, as well as squirrels, moles, and hedgehogs, and carnivores similar to 

 the weasels and civets. Collateral ancestors of the deer and antelope roamed 

 about in large herds, and by the middle of the period had begun to acquire small 

 horns and antlers. In mid-Miocene times the anchitheres disappeared, and were 

 succeeded by the hipparion, much nearer in structrue to the horse. The 

 mastodon came in about the same time, and with him another elephant-like creat- 

 ure, the deinotherium, who lived in the water like a hippopotamus. Carnivores 

 of the cat family reached their highest point of development as regards size and 

 power in the middle and upper Miocene : the machairodus, or sabre-toothed lion, 

 was much larger and more formidable than any lion or tiger now existing. The 

 same period witnessed the arrival in Europe of true apes and baboons, and even 

 of two species of anthropoid ape, allied to the gibbons, one of which, the dryo- 

 piihecus, was as large as a man, and has been regarded as in some respects supe- 

 rior to any modern anthropoid ape. 



Mr. Boyd Dawkins — to whose admirable treatise on Early Man in Britain, 

 the present article is under great obligations — argues forcibly against the proba- 

 bility that man occupied Europe during any part of the Miocene period. All the 



