36 Origin of the British Flora. 
We cannot speak confidently on the point, but the 
evidence suggests that the general outline of the British 
Isles did not greatly differ from that which now holds, 
the principal difference probably being, that the Strait of 
Dover had not then been cut, and that England was 
connected with Belgium and Holland by a wide alluvial 
plain. The legible records of the period here referred to 
are confined to the eastern part of the counties of Norfolk 
and Suffolk, though deposits probably of the same age, 
but containing no fossils, occur in several other of the 
eastern and southern counties. At one spot only, outside 
East Anglia, are fossils apparently of this age to be found. 
Dewlish, in Dorset, has yielded a few bones of the 
characteristic elephant, Alephas meridionalis; but no other 
fossils could be discovered. If the deposit is of the same 
age of the Forest-bed, it certainly suggests that the main 
contours of the land were already shaped; though most of 
the valleys, in that region at any rate, are of later date. 
The climate indicated by the plants and animals of the 
Cromer Forest-bed is very like that which we now enjoy; 
the warmth of the Miocene and early Pliocene Periods had 
passed away, but the cold of the Glacial Epoch had not 
yet swept off the numerous large mammals, nor trans- 
formed the character of the vegetation. 
The Pliocene Period, with its temperate and gradually 
cooling climate, was separated from the present era by a 
period of which the exact history is still obscure. We 
know that this Pleistocene Period was characterised by 
more than one wave of intense cold, which, for a time 
must profoundly have modified the fauna and flora of 
Britain. It was also marked by milder intervals, suff- 
ciently long for the temperate plants to re-appear; and 
also by a period of drought, which brought the fauna of 
Central Asia into continental Europe, and in a minor 
