336 PREHISTORIC EUROPE. 



in Europe the Mediterranean, now larger and now smaller, 

 appears to have endured all through the Pliocene and Pleistocene 

 Periods. Ever and anon, it is true, land -connections between 

 Europe and Africa made their appearance, and so afforded 

 bridges by which the species came and went with the alter- 

 nation of climatic conditions, but many nevertheless must have 

 died out upon the northern shores of the Mediterranean. 



We have seen that a number of characteristic Pleistocene 

 animals had made their appearance in England at the close of 

 the Pliocene Period, or shortly before the advent of the earliest 

 recognised glacial epoch of Pleistocene times. They were 

 associated with several Pliocene forms, such as Hippopotamus 

 amphihius, Elephas meridionalis, Machairodus latidens, Rhinoceros 

 etruscus, R. megarhinus, Ursus arvemensis, Cervus dicranios, and 

 O. polignoxus. Of these, one, the hippopotamus, is still living, 

 while others do not appear to have survived in North-western 

 Europe the first glacial epoch. The southern elephant and 

 the megarhine rhinoceros, however, struggled on into interglacial 

 times, when the former occupied the valley of the Phone, Central 

 France, and Northern Italy, and the latter ranged from Southern 

 Europe into England. The sabre-toothed tiger also would seem 

 to have persisted well on into the Pleistocene Period. Of the 

 other animals that come into view for the first time in the Pre- 

 glacial deposits of Cromer, many appear and re-appear in succes- 

 sive interglacial deposits ; but we note as we advance towards 

 the later stages of the Pleistocene that some of them become 

 rare, while others vanish altogether. The recurrent glacial 

 epochs seem to have told severely upon many of the herbivorous 

 animals. The only two pachyderms that have survived are the 

 hippopotamus already mentioned and the African elephant. 

 During each successive glacial epoch those species which could 

 only exist under a mild climate would be forced to the extreme 

 south of Europe, where, confined within ever -narrowing limits, 

 they would gradually die out. Only the more robust types, 

 such as stag, megaceros, urus, bison, horse, mammoth, woolly 

 rhinoceros — species capable of enduring some severity of cold — 



