PRIMEVAL MAN. 361 



habited the upper valleys and hills near the Alps and Py- 

 renees, which send spurs into Southern and Central France 

 They were perhaps mountaineers, and the animals associa- 

 ted with them and most characteristic of the period were 

 Alpine and northern species. * * * Their neighbors, 

 the Flint folk, or Lowlanders — a taller and stronger race — 

 meantime inhabited the plains of Northern France and Bel- 

 gium, England, and Germany, and the fauna was made up 

 of the mammoth, mastodon, rhinoceros, horse, cave -bear 

 (which was more abundant than with the Reindeer peo- 

 ple), bison, aurochs, and deer, which inhabited the more 

 genial and fertile plains." 



The geological status of the continents on man's first 

 appearance was unique. They had just emerged from the 

 reign of ice. The glaciers had begun to retreat, but, ex- 

 cept in Southern Europe and Middle Asia, the climate was 

 still rigorous. The hairy elephant and rhinoceros, clad in 

 winter furs, as well as the fur-clad bear and hyena, found a 

 fitting abode upon the shores of the Atlantic and Mediter- 

 ranean. The marmot, the wild goat, and the chamois, now 

 confining themselves to the cold peaks of the Alps and the 

 Apennines, lived then upon the lowlands of France and 

 Spain* The musk-ox, in our day restricted to the regions 

 beyond the sixtieth parallel of latitude, grazed in the cold 

 marshes of Dordogne. On the American continent, the 

 subsidence which terminated the reign of frost was not ar- 

 rested till a large portion of the United States had been 

 again submerged ; and on the Oriental continent the indi- 

 cations of northern depression are equally unmistakable 

 and equally extensive. 



The moment that the last revolutionary visitation had 

 come to an end — while yet the lands had become scarcely 

 stable in their places — man seems to have suddenly made 

 his appearance among the beasts of the earth, and to have 



Q 



