1869.] DAWKINS BEITISH POSTGLACIAL MAMMALS. 193 



undertake to chronicle all the Pleistocene Mammals that have been 

 found in Britain is a task that cannot be undertaken with any 

 degree of satisfaction, because the new discoveries that are daily 

 being made render its perfect completion impossible ; but, never- 

 theless, I prefer to bring before the Society the results at which I 

 have arrived at the present time, rather than to await the higher 

 knowledge that possibly might have been acquired during the vicis- 

 situdes of another decade. In the only Enghsh text-book on the 

 Fossil Mammals*, the Preglacial Fauna is confused with the Post- 

 glacial, and that again with the Prehistoric. There is not even a 

 complete list in print of the species that compose any one of these 

 three great groups of Mammals. The numerous undescribed species 

 in Preglacial collections from the forest-bed of Norfolk and Suffolk 

 render it impossible to give a complete list of the Mammalia of that 

 formation, or to trace the precise relation that they bear to those of 

 the Pliocenes of the south of Prance and Lombardy. The British 

 Prehistoric Mammals have already been defined in the essay that is 

 now being printed by the International Congress of Prehistoric 

 Archaeology f. My present object is to define, as sharply as possible, 

 the Postglacial Mammals from those of the preceding and suc- 

 ceeding epochs, to show their distribution in Britain, to prove the 

 identity of the Cave-fauna with that of the Postglacial Piver- 

 beds, and, lastly, to examine the evidence as to the climate of the 

 epoch. 



The term Postglacial is used as the exact equivalent of the Qua- 

 ternary of Mr. Prestwich and the French savants, and the Post- 

 pliocene of Sir Charles Lyell, and is applied to that group of animals 

 which have been proved, by the labours of Dr. Falconer, M. LartetJ, 

 and others to have inhabited France, Germany, and Britain after 

 the Glacial period, and which most probably invaded the portions of 

 the Preglacial continent that were not submerged while the great 

 boulder- drift was falling from the melting icebergs that floated over 

 the depressed area in northern Europe. 



§ 2. Distribution of Postglacial Mammals throughout En,gland and 

 Wales. — All the cases that I have been able to collect of the occur- 

 rence of fossil mammals in the more ancient caves and in the high- 

 and low-level gravels of England and Wales, are arranged in the 

 following table in natural, and their localities in alphabetical, order. 

 All doubtful species have been omitted. For the determination of 

 the animals from the caves of "Wales I am indebted in part to Mr. 

 W. A. Sanford, F.G.S., and the late Dr. Falconer, F.R.S. § ; for 

 that of the Mammals of Brixham, to Prof, ^usk, F.P.S., and for 

 those of Salisbury to Dr. Blackmore, F.G.S. 



* British Fossil Mammals, 8vo. 1846. f Norwich Meeting, 1868. 



I Falconer, Palaeont. Mem. 1868. Lartet, Comptes Eendus, t. xlvi. 

 § Op. cit. vol. ii. 



