354 SKETCHES OF VBEATION. 



there is a Stone Age ; and if the race advances, this is fol- 

 lowed by an Age of Bronze, and this by an Age of Iron. 

 Some Eastern nations passed out of their Stone Age three 

 thousand years or more before the Christian era. Some 

 of the peoples of Central and Northern Europe were in 

 their Stone Age when Csesar subjugated Gaul. The Sand- 

 wich Islanders were in their Stone Age when first visited 

 by Capt. Cook, while the Esquimaux and the North Amer- 

 ican Indians generally are still in their Stone Age. The 

 Age of Stone is simply the stage of infancy. Different 

 peoples have emerged at different epochs from the state of 

 national infancy. 



When man first made his advent in Europe, that conti- 

 nent was still the abode of quadrupeds now long extinct. 

 The contemporaries of man in the Hewn-stone epoch were 

 the Cave-Bear (Ursus spelceus), followed by the Cave-Hy- 

 ena (Hyena sjielcea) and the Cave-Lion. These gradually 

 gave place to gigantic herbivores — the Hairy Mammoth 

 (Eleplias primigenius), the Hairy Rhinoceros {Rhinoceros 

 tichorinus), and the Reindeer. The mammoth roamed in 

 herds over the whole of Europe, Northern Asia, and even 

 North America. The hairy, or two-horned rhinoceros, 

 in company with another two-horned species, thundered 

 through the forests, or wallowed in the jungles and swamps. 

 The rivers and lakes of Southern Europe were tenanted by 

 hippopotami and beavers — the former as huge and un- 

 wieldy, and with tusks as large as any which terrify the 

 African Bushman. Three kinds of wild oxen, two of 

 which were of colossal strength, and one of these " maned 

 and villous like the Bonassus," grazed with the marmot, 

 and wild goat, and chamois upon the plains which skirt the 

 Mediterranean. The musk-ox and the reindeer browsed 

 in the meadows of Perigord, in the south of France, while 

 a gigantic elk (Jlegaceros hibernicus) ranged from Ireland 

 to the borders of Italy (Fig. 99). 



