17G 



CLIMATE OF AGES OF BBONZE AND OF STONE. 



[Ch. X. 



our ground, and to reason 



from 



unknown, 



must first ascertain the relation which the 



present organic creation bears to that of the period imme- 



diately antecedent, and then carry back our retrospect step bj 

 step to formations of older date. In adopting this course we 

 have the advantage of comparing, in the first instance, the 

 species now in being, of which the habits and physiological 

 characters are known, with the animal and vegetable remains 



entombed 



as we have 



seen in the last chapter, all the classes of animals and plants 

 are represented in proportions very analogous to those now 

 prevailing. By this means we escape the danger of one 

 source of error, namely, that of ascribing the predominance 

 of certain genera or families to a difference in climate which 

 in reality may have depended not on temperature but on the 

 absence of competing tribes of higher grade, which, accord- 

 ing to the law of progressive development, had not yet made 

 their appearance on the earth. 



)f the Ages of Bronze and of 



— In pursuance, 



maj 



place, the climate of Europe in times immediately anterior to 

 the historical. We there find no indications of any marked 

 divergence from the present condition of things, whether in 



memorials 



£> 



stone age,"* which preceded 



inely, that to which the 



middens and many 



belonged. 



It is evident that the plants 



animals which co- 



existed with man in those ages were identical with species 

 now living in the same countries, with the exception of a few 

 known to have been locally extirpated in historical times. 



The next antecedent era of which we have acquired any 

 information, is that designated by M. Lartet ' the Reindeer 

 period/ when that northern animal extended its range to the 

 foot of the Pyrenees, together with several others fitted for 

 a cold climate. The mammoth and cave-lion quadrupeds, 



* Sir John Lubbock, in his l Prehisto- 

 ric Times,' p. 3, has proposed the term 



1 Neolithic ' for this more modern age of 



stone; calling the older stone period, that 

 in which man was contemporary with 

 many extinct mammalia, * Palaeolithic 





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