PHYSICAL CONDITIONS— PLEISTOCENE. 355 



some of which are probably referable to this date, have been 

 detected at various places on the Mediterranean seaboard. 1 The 

 arctic fauna and flora, followed closely by the temperate species, 

 now crept slowly north again. The reindeer, the musk-sheep, 

 and their congeners, forsook the south of France — although it is 

 not improbable that some of these may also have continued to 

 linger on in the upper valleys of the Pyrenees and the Alps, 

 long after the main body had vacated Central Europe. 



In Scotland and Scandinavia the dissolution of the ice-sheet 

 was accompanied by a submergence which in the former country 

 was inconsiderable, hardly exceeding in the east and west of 

 the central district 100 feet under the present sea-level, but 

 increasing to 200 feet in the neighbourhood of the Moray Firth. 

 Southern Scandinavia, however, sank to a depth of not less than 

 600 feet below the same datum-line. The seas were still cold, a 

 highly arctic fauna living in the Scottish waters. In the east 

 of England there are traces of a slight submergence, probably 

 referable to this period, but so far as is known the subsidence 

 was confined chiefly to Scotland and the southern region of 

 Sweden and Norway, where it appears to have reached its 

 maximum. The Baltic at this time, as some believe, communi- 

 cated with the Arctic Ocean, and the climate of all Northern 



1 As, for example, at Malaga (Ansted: Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, vol. xv. p. 

 599 ; in Corsica (Hollande : Bull. Soc. G60I. France, 3 e Ser. t. iv. p. 186) ; in 

 Sicily (Gemmellaro : Atti della Accademia Gioenia, 1859, t. xiv. p. 187) ; in 

 Central and Southern Italy, where, according to Stefani, certain strata which 

 hitherto hare always been classed as younger Pliocene, such as those of Ficarazzi, 

 Monte Mario, Yallebiaia, etc. , ought more properly to be ranged with deposits of 

 the Glacial Period. In these beds, he says, extinct species are extremely rare, 

 while northern forms, such as Cyprina islandica, occur, which are wanting in the 

 lower strata or true Pliocene. It is probable that the beds referred to are the relics 

 of some earlier stage of the Glacial Period (see ante, p. 334) than that of which I 

 speak above ; (see Boll. Com. Geol. Italia, 1876, p. 209). Dr. Hoernes mentions 

 the occurrence of raised shell-beds on the route between Kalamaki and Lumaki 

 (Isthmus of Corinth) at nine to eleven metres above the sea, and states that 

 similar deposits are met with at many other places on the Mediterranean seaboard, 

 such as the Morea, Rhodes, Cyprus, Pozzuoli, Algeria, etc. ; (see Bull. Soc. Giol. 

 France, 2 e Ser. t. xiii. p. 571. They occur on the east coast of Tunis (Pomelj: 

 Bull. Soc. Geol. France, 3 e Ser. t. vi. p. 217), and on the Barbary Coast (Ramsay 

 and J. Geikie : Quart. Journ Geol. Soc, 1878, p. 514). 



