28 PREHISTORIC EUROPE. 



having been found in nearly every country of Europe. They 

 have not been met with farther south, however, than Spain and 

 Central Italy. As every one knows, entire carcasses of this enor- 

 mous animal have been preserved so perfectly in the frozen 

 earth of Northern Siberia that we are very well informed as to 

 its nature. It was of great size, much exceeding the largest of its 

 modern representatives, and was provided with a covering of long 

 black hair, mixed at the roots with a thick fleece of reddish wool. 



The Hippopotamus (H. anvphibius) is confined to Africa, 

 where its range has been considerably restricted within historical 

 times, for it formerly abounded in the Delta of the Nile. It is 

 common to most of the rivers in the south of the Continent, 

 and is found in the Niger, the Senegal, and the Nile. A smaller 

 species (H. liberiensis) occurs in the Eiver St. Paul, in Liberia. 

 The remains of a large species (H. major) which is believed to 

 be identical with the African form (H. amphibius) have been 

 found in ancient river-gravels and bone-caves in Europe as far 

 north as Yorkshire. It is remarkable, also, that the bone-caves 

 of Italy, Sicily, and Malta have yielded the remains of a small 

 species of hippopotamus (IT. Pentlancli) in great abundance. 



The Rhinoceros. — The living species of rhinoceros are 

 southern forms, being distributed over Africa south of the 

 Sahara, and over wide regions in India, Burmah, and Sumatra. 

 No fewer than four species, all of them extinct, have left their re- 

 mains in the Pleistocene alluvia and bone-caves of our continent. 

 Of these the most common is the woolly rhinoceros (B. ticho- 

 rhinits) a carcass of which was found many years ago (1771) in 

 frozen ground on the banks of the Vilni, a branch of the Lena. 

 This rhinoceros had a range probably as extensive as that - of the 

 mammoth, but hitherto its remains have not been met with south 

 of the Alps and Pyrenees. Of the three remaining species, B. 

 hemitcechtis (B. leptorhinus, Owen) is the more common; it is found 

 both in bone-caves and old river-gravels, and ranged north from 

 the Mediterranean coast as far as Yorkshire. B. megarhinus is 

 of much less frequent occurrence, but it ranged north from 

 Southern Europe into England. B. Merckii (Jaeger and Kaup) 



