268 THE MKNPtTS : A OKOLOCaCAL REVERIE. 



still lie the remnants of tlie deposits of the geological middle 

 age. 



From that time to the present the Mendips have remained 

 above the waters. They have looked out on many more 

 recent geological changes. They have seen, in Tertiary 

 times, spreading over London, Hampshire, and the Isle of 

 Wight, the warm waters of a tropical bay or estuary, in 

 which a host of crocodiles lay basking, and turtles lazily 

 disported themselves over London, untroubled by the night- 

 mare visions of aldermanic feasts. They have seen England, 

 then joined to the Continent, the home of huge mamnuils of 

 strange and uncouth aspect. They have seen the coast of 

 Suffolk bordered by a sea, growing colder and colder, and 

 colonized by a constantly increasing number of arctic shells 

 which migrated southwards before the advancing ice. They 

 have seen the north of England and Scotland buried under 

 glaciers and vast accumulations of land ice or partially sub- 

 merged under an ice-ladon sea. Thoir own flaidiS may have 

 been torn, and their gorges and ravines scoured out and 

 deepened by torrential rivers due to the molting of the snow 

 with which they were themselves covered. Tlioy have seen 

 early man forced to migrate before the, advancing ice, con- 

 tending against fierce beasts of prey, or hunting the milder 

 equines and bovines, armed with rudely fashioned weapons 

 of flint and stone. 



And here the Mendips themselves are able to afford their 

 item of evidence ; for in caves hollowed out in the limestone 

 rock there are found the bones and teeth of the animals 

 which then ranged over the Mendips and the extensive 

 valley flats which fringed them to the south and north. 

 Into some of these caves, such as that at Banwell, the bones 

 were washed from the surface by streams which disappeared 

 down swallet-holes. Others were hyaana dens into which 



