THE BO VINES 341 



representatives of this group may have reached Southern France. 

 The Tragelaphs possibly originated in Asia, where they have left 

 one living example in the nilghai. They attained considerable 

 development in Greece, Asia Minor, and Algeria, but their range 

 at the present day is entirely confined to India and Tropical Africa. 

 The True Antelopes are represented in the British fauna of the 

 Pleistocene by two examples, a gazelle (Gazella anglicd), the 

 remains of which have been found in the eastern counties ; and 

 the saiga {Saiga tartar tea), a somewhat aberrant antelope belong- 

 ing to the Gazelle group. 



But little is known regarding Gazella anglica, which was 

 probably allied in race to one or other of those types of rather 

 sturdily-built gazelles with lyrate horns, which are found at the 

 present day in the temperate regions of Central Asia. The 

 gazelle (together with the saiga and other forms that co-existed 

 with them in Eastern Britain in the early Pleistocene) is rather 

 associated with a dry country of steppes. At the time when 

 it lived in England there are indications that East Anglia was 

 more connected with Belgium, Holland, and Germany (of which 

 it formed a projection) than with the rest of Britain, owing to 

 the inlet of the North Sea, which began at the Wash. There 

 is much in the present condition of the plains of Northern 

 Germany which would thoroughly suit gazelles (no change of 

 climate being necessary), and it only needs to give East Anglia 

 the continental climate of Prussia to make it suitable for habita- 

 tion by these steppe-frequenting antelopes. There would be 

 gazelles allied to the Persian and Tibetan now in Northern 

 Germany but for the presence of man. 



As regards the saiga, this strange-looking beast inhabited 

 Eastern and Southern England much more decidedly than did 

 the gazelle. Its remains have been found (amongst other places) 

 at Twickenham, in the Thames Valley. Its existence in England 

 was seemingly of later occurrence by perhaps thousands of years 

 than that of the gazelle in East Anglia, which apparently died out 

 at the beginning of the Glacial age. 



