350 PREHISTORIC EUROPE. 



Lions, hyaenas, and bears haunted the caves — and with all these 

 creatures Palaeolithic man was contemporaneous. The land- and 

 freshwater-shells showed a similar remarkable commingling of 

 species — all the evidence, in short, conspires to assure us that the 

 climate was singularly equable. If laurels, fig-trees, and judas- 

 trees grew side by side in Northern France with the sycamore 

 and the ash, and in low-lying countries on the borders of the 

 Mediterranean with pines, oaks, beeches, poplars, and elms, so also 

 were elephants, rhinoceroses, and hippopotamuses, horses, oxen, 

 and deer, hares and rabbits, wolves, foxes, lions, and hysenas, joint- 

 occupants of the same regions. The humidity of the climate is 

 evinced by the character of the vegetation no less than by the 

 peculiar distribution of the mollusca. And the great breadth 

 and depth attained by the streams and rivers is further testi- 

 mony in the same direction. 



By and by the climate began to change, and the succes- 

 sion which I have briefly described above was reversed. The 

 winters became colder — perhaps, too, the rainfall increased. The 

 tender southern species of plants now commenced to retreat 

 from Middle Europe and to creep farther and farther south, and 

 a like migration of the fauna ensued. At the same time the 

 British area began to subside. The North Sea once more made 

 its appearance ; the Channel again came between England and 

 the Continent ; slowly the land sank into the water — the sub- 

 mergence reaching in Wales and Ireland to as much as 1200 

 to 1300 feet below the present sea-level, and in Scotland prob- 

 ably to a similar or even a greater depth, although of that we 

 have no direct evidence. While this downward movement was 

 in progress, the deterioration of the climate continued, and 

 northern and boreal molluscs made their appearance in our seas 

 and increased in numbers as time went on. Whether the Scan- 

 dinavian peninsula was submerged to the same extent we can- 

 not tell — if it was, all proofs of that change (unless my sug- 

 gestion as to the interglacial age of the ancient rock beach-lines 

 of Norway should prove to be well founded) must have been 

 removed during the immediately succeeding glacial epoch. The 



