CLIMATE OF PLEISTOCENE PERIOD. 41 



western Europe at that time must have been essentially tem- 

 perate, so that what we now call our temperate fauna ranged 

 then from the shores of the Northern Ocean down to and even 

 south of the Pyrenees and the Alps. Carnivorous animals like 

 the lion, the hyaena, and the leopard, would be also widely dis- 

 tributed, finding abundant food in nearly every part of the 

 Continent. Thus at the time hippopotamuses wallowed in the 

 rivers of France and England, and great herds of cervine and 

 bovine animals wandered from glade to glade, our caves and 

 forests were haunted by fierce carnivores. The reindeer and its 

 associates could not flourish under such climatic conditions, and 

 their range in Europe must therefore have been extremely 

 limited. Marmots and lemmings would retire to the alpine 

 heights, and reindeer might possibly linger upon the lofty 

 plateaux of Northern Scandinavia. It is more probable, how- 

 ever, that they lived beyond the precincts of Europe, and may 

 have occupied territories that are now drowned in the icy waters 

 of the Northern Ocean. For we know very well that Europe 

 and Asia within a recent geological period have extended much 

 farther into the Polar Seas, and that a wide stretch of Arctic 

 land, of which Novaia Zemlia and Spitzbergen formed a part, 

 has been recently submerged. 



We have now only to suppose that, after enduring for some 

 prolonged period, such climatic conditions gradually changed. 

 The warm ocean currents became more and more reduced 

 in volume, and the winters in consequence waxed colder and 

 colder. Such a change might have taken place at so slow a 

 rate that generations might have come and gone before any 

 decided difference in the climate could have been recognised. 

 But as the winter cold increased, both flora and fauna would 

 begin to testify to the change — the hippopotamus, and doubtless 

 other animals, gradually disappearing from Britain and Middle 

 Europe. Many of the hardier temperate forms, however, would 

 continue for a time to tenant the lands which the bulky pachy- 

 derms had vacated. But when the winters had become so 

 intense as to favour the existence of reindeer and musk-sheep 



