CENOZOIC TIME — QUATERNARY. 997 



is the only peak over 6000 feet, and but a very small part of it is as higli as 

 this. The Scandinavian areas are in much higher northern latitudes. 



Geikie's map on page 976 presents the views of many European geolo- 

 gists with regard to the extension at this time of the Scandinavian ice. The 

 only countries invaded beyond the Baltic are Holland and northern Germany. 

 Eussia was free. The evidence of the return consists chiefly in the occurrence 

 of beds of peat or of stratified gravels, sometimes with animal remains, 

 between deposits of till. In the Alps such intercalations are reported from 

 Diirnten in the Canton of Zurich, in St. Gall, and elsewhere ; and in some 

 places they contain bones of the Elephant, Ehinoceros, Cave Bear, and other 

 Mammals of the time. 



Further evidence of a partial return of the cold consists in the occurrence 

 in southern France of remains of arctic and subarctic Mammals, among 

 which the Reindeer was prominent ; whence the epoch is named, by Lartet, 

 the Reindeer epoch. The reelevation, before it was fully completed, cut off 

 the Baltic again from the ocean on the north and west; for, as Erdmami 

 states, while on the upper terraces the shells of the Baltic coasts include the 

 outside kind, Yolclia arctica, the open-sea species are all excluded from the 

 lower terraces, excepting a few Baltic kinds, of which the Mytilus is the most 

 common. 



LIFE OF THE PLEISTOCENE, OR THAT OF THE EARLY AND MIDDLE QUATERNARY. 



It has been already stated that the Plants and Invertebrates (Mollusks, 

 etc.) of the Quaternary are, with a rare exception, living species, while the 

 Mammals are nearly all extinct. Another grand feature of the life is the 

 great size of a large part of the Mammals, Elephants far exceeding modern 

 Elephants, and the same with other Herbivores, and with many Carnivores, 

 Edentates, Rodents, and Marsupials. The genial climate that followed 

 the Glacial appears to have been marvelously genial to the species, and alike 

 so for all the continents, Australia included. The kinds that continued into 

 modern time became dwindled in the change wherever found over the globe, 

 notwithstanding the fact that genial climates are still to be found over large 

 regions. Moreover, it was during and after the final melting in the Cham- 

 plain period, when the continents were everywhere dripping with water, that 

 the greatest of forests covered the hills and prairies, — forests that in the 

 present period could not be renewed without an impracticable amount of 

 artificial irrigation, and which hence, through forest fires, have given way in 

 America to prairies. 



BRUTE MAMMALS AND INFERIOR SPECIES. 



North American. 



North America was prominently the continent of Herbivores ; Carnivores 

 were relatively few. The most widely distributed species and one of tho 

 largest was the Elephas primigenius. It ranged from Georgia, Florida, 



