THE MENmPS: A QEOLOaiCAL REVERIE. 



259 



these creatures dragged their prey. From time to time 

 primitive man ousted the hyaenas from their dons and tooJc 

 summary possession thereof. 



"Wo may picture to ourselves," says Mr. Boyd Dawkins 

 " a fertile plain occupying [a considerable area of] the 

 Bristol Channel, and supporting herds of reindeer horses 

 and bisons, many elephants and rhinoceroses, and now and 

 then being traversed by a stray hippopotamus, which would 

 afford abundant prey to the lions, bears, and hyaanas in- 

 habiting all the accessible caves, as well as to their <Teat 

 destroyer— man. . . . Hyaenas were the normal occu- 

 pants of the caves {e.g. Wookey Hole) and thither they 

 brought their prey. We can picture these animals pursuing 

 elephants and rhinoceroses along the slopes of the Mendips 

 till they scared them into the precipitous ravine (Cheddar 

 (Torge), or watching until the strength of a disabled bear or 

 lion ebbed away sufficiently to allow of its being overcome 

 by their cowardly strength. Man appeared from time to 

 time on the scene, a miserable savage, armed with bow and 

 spear and unacquainted with metals. Sometimes he took 

 possession of the don and di-ovo out the hyaenas. He kindled 

 his fires at the entrance, to cook his food and to keep away 

 the wild animals ; then he went away, and the hysnas came 

 back to their own abode." 



The " miserable savage " of whom Mr. Boyd Dawkins here 

 speaks, belonged to the old Palaeolithic folk who ranged the 

 Mendips when England was continental, and when Scotland 

 and the North had not yot shaken off the chill ico-pall of 

 the glacial epoch. Witliout the aid of the dog they lived 

 as best they could by the chase, armed and appointed with 

 rudely iiiiishcd chipped implements fashioned from such 

 flints as they found ready to their hand. But the Mendips 

 whicli had already witnessed so many changes, saw this race 



