522 



PREHISTORIC E UR OPE. 



region of Southern Sweden is no standard of measurement ; the 

 movement of depression which sundered Faeroe, Iceland, and 

 Greenland from our continent may just as well have progressed 

 at the rate of five feet. In some places it may have been more, 

 in others less ; and it may have varied in degree at different 

 times. 



The traces of a mild and genial postglacial climate having 

 been met with so far north as Greenland and Spitzbergen, it can 

 hardly be doubted that Central Europe must also have partici- 

 pated to some extent in the same conditions, and rejoiced in a 

 more equable climate than the present. But the direct proofs of 

 this must necessarily be more difficult to detect. The presence 

 of remains of trees in the peat of the Faeroe Islands and the 

 bleak and sterile coast of Wellington Channel speaks a language 

 that no one can misunderstand, but the contrast between ^the 

 present and the past must obviously be less striking in more 

 temperate latitudes. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that 

 the abundant remains of large trees in the peat of Norway, 

 Sweden, Denmark, Schleswig-Holstein, Holland, Northern Ger- 

 many, and Finland, betoken the former existence of much more 

 extensive forests than can possibly have flourished within the 

 historical period. Even after making every allowance for the 

 destruction of trees by man's hand during and since the days of 

 the Eoman Empire, we must admit that a very large proportion 

 of the buried timber must date back to very distant prehistoric 

 times. And the great antiquity of the old buried forests is in 

 many cases proved by the fact that the human relics which 

 they have yielded are frequently of Neolithic age. The animal 

 remains furnished by them are of the common temperate species, 

 which are still in large measure indigenous, and do not aid us, 

 therefore, in coming to any definite conclusion as to the climatic 

 conditions. But the fact that the red-deer was in postglacial 

 times an inhabitant of Kurland would lead us to conclude with 

 Professor Grewingk that the climate of that region must have 

 been milder then than now. The whole of Northern Europe 

 was covered, as it would appear, with dense forests — overspread- 



