wxxii PLEISTOCENE MAMMALIA. 



derived from the district of Astrachan. It arrived in France and Britain about three 

 years afterwards, and has very nearly exterminated the indigenous species, the black rat 

 [Mus rattus). 



The wild and domestic animals of Switzerland in the eleventh century have been 

 preserved, by a singular chance, in a grace written by Ekkehard the younger (a.d. 980 — 

 1036) for the use of the monks of St. Galle. Besides the bear, wild boar, chamois, 

 bouquetin, marmot, roe, stag, and fallowdeer, all of which still live in Switzerland and the 

 adjacent regions, the bison, urus, and the wild horse are mentioned, as well as the Bos 

 sylvanus} The last animal was most probably, like the Taurus sylvestris, which is men- 

 tioned in the life of St. Thomas, not a wild, but a domestic species, turned out to get 

 its living in woodlands. 



With these exceptions the Historic Mammalia of Middle Europe differ very little 

 from those of Britain. 



The northern regions present a fauna which differs from that at present inhabiting 

 temperate Europe, in the presence of the reindeer, the lemming, the polar bear, the Arctic 

 fox, as well as a peculiar lynx, Felis borealis, and the abundance of gluttons. We shall 

 see in the course of this work how this northern group of animals crept southwards, 

 until in the Pleistocene times it had full possession of Middle Europe. 



Southern Europe. 



The barren rock of Gibraltar affords a precarious existence to the only species of 

 monkey found in Europe ; and the neighbouring mainland of Spain is inhabited by the 

 wild sheep. 



The ape of Gibraltar, and the ferret 1 of Spain, have probably been introduced by 

 man from the adjacent coast of Barbary. 



The Iberian peninsula is stated by Varro to have possessed wild horses. 2 The fallow- 

 deer still lives in the wilder regions. According to a report on the game-laws, presented 

 to Parliament in the year 1871 in consequence of no well-enforced system for the 

 preservation of game in the Iberian peninsula, there is a most alarming decrease in every 

 species of game throughout the country. Pliny states that the rabbit is indigenous in 

 Spain, and that it has spread over Europe from that centre ; but this now is disproved, 

 as Prof. Gervais writes, by the discovery of rabbits' bones in the prehistoric caves of 

 Erance. The animal has also been found under the same condition in Belgium, by 

 M. Dupont. 



The Historic animals, wild in Italy, are essentially of the same species as those of 



1 Desmarest, ' Mammalogie,' sp. 273 ; Clermont, ' Quadrupeds and Reptiles of Europe,' p. 54. 



2 'De Re Rustica,' 2, 1, 5. 



