262 PREHISTORIC EUROPE. 



have among the former a bear ( Ursus arvernensis), a rhinoceros 

 (B. etruscus), 1 and a deer (Cervus polignacus), which have not yet 

 been met with in any deposits of more recent age. Again, 

 several of the forms which appear in the " forest-bed " are com- 

 mon Pliocene species that seem to have vanished from the 

 European fauna in early Pleistocene times. Among these are, 

 Machairodus, and others which occur in the older Pleistocene 

 deposits, but have not been dug up in beds pertaining to the 

 latest stage of the Pleistocene Period. Nevertheless the charac- 

 teristic Pleistocene fauna is well represented in the " forest-bed " 

 of Norfolk by such animals as cave-bear, wolf, fox, wild-boar, 

 urus, mammoth, Irish deer, roe, stag, beaver, and mole. The 

 fauna of the " forest-bed " is thus intermediate between that of 

 the Pliocene on the one hand and of the Pleistocene on the 

 other, and is more closely allied to the latter than the former. 



Here, then, we have evidence to show that the Pleistocene 

 mammalia — those animals with which, as we have seen, Palaeo- 

 lithic man was contemporaneous — were already in occupation 

 of England before the accumulation of the oldest boulder-clay 

 of that country. In those early preglacial times we are con- 

 fronted with certain animals, some of which seem to have died 

 out with the advent of the first glacial epoch, while a few 

 lingered on, but eventually vanished before the close of the 

 Pleistocene Period, the hippopotamus being the only one of the 

 true Pliocene forms which has survived. Overlying the " forest- 

 bed " comes a series of fluvio-marine beds which have yielded 

 many plant-remains, amongst them being the Arctic willow 

 (Salix polaris), and an arctic and high-alpine species of moss 

 (Hypnum turgescens). These plants were detected in the upper 

 part of the fluvio-marine series immediately below the Cromer 

 boulder-clay, by Mr. Nathorst. Their evidence is quite in 

 keeping with that supplied by the overlying till. They show 

 that before that till was deposited the climate had become very 



1 According to Professor Brandt, the R. Merckii, which occurs in the Pleis- 

 tocene deposits of Diirnten in Switzerland, is only a variety of the R. etruscus of 

 Falconer. Seepostea, p. 299. 



