45 8 PREHISTORIC EUROPE. 



cial fauna is so well represented. This, however, is after all only 

 negative evidence. It may be that the mammoth did re-visit 

 England, in greatly diminished numbers, perhaps, in postglacial 

 times, and that its general absence from the deposits of the 

 period in question may be thus accounted for. 1 It is not without 

 significance that remains of the reindeer likewise occur very 

 sparingly in postglacial deposits, and it does not appear to have 

 been hunted in England or similar latitudes on the Continent in 

 early Neolithic times. It is pretty certain, indeed, that the 

 arctic fauna had disappeared from Middle and Western Europe 

 before the advent of Neolithic man. The reindeer and its 

 northern congeners retired to their present homes across the 

 area vacated by the great mer ale glace of the last cold epoch of 

 the Glacial Period. The question is, did the mammoth also 

 migrate northwards in postglacial times, and become extinct in 

 North-western Europe before the approach of the Neolithic 

 people ? At present we cannot assert that it did not follow the 

 reindeer — on the contrary, such evidence as we have would lead 

 one to infer that it did re-appear in England in post-pleisto- 

 cene or postglacial times, but probably became locally extinct 

 before the commencement of the Neolithic age. I say locally 

 extinct, because it is hard to believe that the complete carcasses 

 found in the frozen earth of Siberia can date back to so remote 

 a period as the Pleistocene and early Postglacial. Be this, 

 however, as it may, it seems to me quite an open question 

 whether the mammoth may not have survived in Europe the 

 last cold epoch of the true Ice Age, and the deposition of the 

 valley-loss of the great continental rivers. 



The submarine forests and peat, and the Postglacial and 

 Eecent raised-beaches of Ireland, being of the same nature as 

 those of England and Scotland, do not call for special descrip- 



1 It would appear to be equally rare in the postglacial alluvia and peat of the 

 Continent. The only instance which I know of is that of a molar which was 

 found under the peat-bog of Eelde, in the Province of Drenthe (Holland). The 

 same bog has yielded horns of an ox (Bos priscus ?). Tegenwoordige : Staxd van 

 het Landschap Drenthe, p. 340. It is possible that the molar may be derivative 

 in this case. 



