TTTE BONR-OAVE OTI FTRRURE OF nUTCDTTAM T>OWN. 41, 



tlic Oojitinont; wliilst an elevation of only 20 or 30 fathoms 

 would connect Britain to Europe, and 40 or 60 Ireland 

 also. The discovery of the mammotli, I'hinoceros, hoivso, 

 Irish elk, wolf, lion, and bear on so small an island as Caldy 

 (near Tenby), is cited by Boyd Dawkins, to show that a 

 considerable change has taken place in the relation of the 

 land to the sea in that district since those animals were 

 alive. It would have been impossible for so many and so 

 large animals to have obtained food on so small an island. 

 It may therefoi^e reasonably 'be concluded that when they 

 perished in the fissures, Caldy was not an island, but a pre- 

 cipitous hill, overlooking the broad valley now covered by 

 the waters of the Bristol Channel, but then affording abun- 

 dant pasture to large numbers of herbivorous mammalia. 



The same inference may also be drawn from the vast num- 

 bers of animals found in the- Grower caves (near Swansea) 

 which could not have been supported by the scant herbage 

 of the limestone hills of that district.* Wo must therefore 

 picture to ourselves a fertile plain, occupying the whole of 

 the Bristol Channel, and supporting herds of reindeer, 

 horses, and bisons, many clcjihants and rhinoceroses, and 

 now and then traversed by a stray hippopotamus, which 

 would afford abundant prey to the lions, boars, and hyuenas 

 inhabiting all the accessible caves in the neighbourhood, as 

 well as to their great enemy and destroyer, man. 



* At the period of which we are spealdng, Durdhiim Down (or, as tho 

 level plateau going by that name might more appropriately he designated 

 "Durdhain Plains ") would form, not as it now does, a comparatively 

 low-lying plain about 300 feet high, but an elevated tableland nearly 

 one thousand feet above the level of the sea. 



