344 THE TUNDRAS AND STEPPES OF PREHISTORIC EUROPE. 



It will be remembered that during the first glacial epoch a great 

 Baltic glacier existed, and an arctic fauna lived in the North Sea. That 

 epoch was succeeded by the first interglacial stage, when the southern 

 part of the North Sea became dry land, and England was occupied by 

 an abundant mammalian fauna — comprising hippopotamus, elephants, 

 rhinoceros, horse, bison, boar, many kinds of deer, and a number of 

 carnivores, including bears, hyena, saber-toothed tiger, wolf, fox, etc. 

 The contemporaneous flora was temperate, resembling very much that 

 which now exists in southeast England. In similar latitudes on the 

 continent the same mammalian fauna flourished, while the flora was 

 temperate, but suggestive of less strongly contrasted summers and 

 winters than the present. A kind of insular climate, in short, seems to 

 have characterized north Germany. 



To this genial interglacial epoch succeeded the second and most 

 extreme of all the glacial epochs. An enormous mer de glace then 

 extended over all northern and northwestern Europe, from the British 

 area in the west to the Urals in the east, and from Lapland in the north 

 to the mountains of middle Europe in the south. (See Map B.) 



When these extreme conditions eventually passed away, the second 

 interglacial epoch supervened, characterised, as the earlier one had 

 been, by a genial temperate climate, by the presence in England and 

 the continent of the great pachyderms and their congeners, and by the 

 appearance of Paleolithic man. 



This second interglacial epoch was in its turn succeeded by a third 

 advance of the Scandinavian " inland ice," which once more coalesced 

 with the mer de glace of the British area. It did not, however, flow so 

 far as its predecessor. Nevertheless, it reached the Valdai Hills in the 

 east, the valley of the Elbe in the south, and covered all Scotland, the 

 north of England, and the major portion of Ireland. This ice flow was 

 most probably contemporaneous with the third advance of the great 

 glaciers of the Alps. (See Map 0.) 



It is noteworthy that the loss in north Germany nowhere overlies 

 the morainic accumulations of the third glacial epoch. It does, how- 

 ever, cover the marginal area of the ground formerly invaded by the 

 second and greatest mer de glace. This clearly shows that the loss 

 of north Germany must belong, in part at least, to the second intergla- 

 cial epoch. The fact that it everywhere avoids the regions over which 

 the third great ice sheet prevailed, does not, however, prove that tun- 

 dra and steppe conditions did not supervene at a later date in middle 

 Europe. The evidence supplied by the alpine lands, and the great 

 valleys that drain those lands, is quite conclusive of the contrary. 

 There is no doubt whatever that the Paleolithic reindeer hunters fol- 

 lowed the chase in middle Europe long after the third great Scandina- 

 vian mer de glace had retired from the plains of north Germany. The 

 geographical distribution of the wind-blown loss shows that steppe 

 conditions were restricted to a broad belt of land in middle Europe. 



