CLIMATE OF PLEISTOCENE PERIOD. 33 



(B. megarhinus, B. Merckii, and B. hcmitcechus) were no doubt 

 members of the southern group, as also were the sabre-toothed 

 tiger (Machairodus latidens) and the dwarf hippopotamus (H. 

 Pentlandi). The Irish deer was most probably a temperate 

 species, and the cave-bear is with some reason also relegated 

 to the temperate group. Thus of these extinct species, not less 

 than ten belonged to types whose nearest analogues at the pre- 

 sent day must be sought for in southern regions. 



The animals that were contemporaneous with man in the 

 Old Stone Age, form, as we have seen, a somewhat motley 

 assemblage, comprising representatives from many widely 

 separated zones. Arctic and boreal are strangely commingled 

 with temperate and southern species, and we may search the 

 whole living world in vain for any similar concourse of groups 

 so discordant and unlike. If we confine our attention to the 

 forms with which we are most familiar, we should say that they 

 betokened climatic conditions not unlike those of our own and 

 similar latitudes. But then we are confronted by the northern 

 species, such as musk-sheep and reindeer, which in Palaeolithic 

 times were distributed over all Northern and Middle Europe as 

 far south at least as Southern France. Now it is quite im- 

 possible that these animals could have ranged to this low 

 latitude unless the climate of prehistoric Europe had differed 

 greatly from the conditions that now obtain. How could the 

 climate of France have been other than cold and ungenial 

 when the reindeer and the musk-sheep were hunted by Palaeolithic 

 man in the low grounds of Aquitaine ? "We are reminded, 

 however, that during the same Old Stone Age, the hippopotamus 

 and its southern congeners visited England and North-western 

 Europe ; from which we are surely to infer that those regions 

 then experienced a mild and genial climate. Thus the evidence 

 of one group seems to contradict that of the other. The con- 

 tradiction, however, is only apparent. 



Europe, owing to its geographical position, enjoys what may 

 be termed an insular climate. It is bathed along the whole 

 western coast-line by the waters of the wide-stretching Atlantic, 



D 



