356 PREHISTORIC EUROPE. 



Europe, notwithstanding the disappearance of the mer de glace 

 from the low grounds, must have been still very ungenial. 



"We have now arrived at the closing scenes of the Glacial 

 Period. Scandinavia and Scotland were re-elevated — the climate 

 gradually moderated over all Europe — and the first chapter of 

 Postglacial history began. The tracing-out of this history must 

 be my task in the pages that follow, but I shall here anticipate 

 certain conclusions, the reasonableness of which I hope to de- 

 monstrate in the sequel. 



Ptiver- and lake-deposits, peat-mosses, and, in short, terrestrial 

 accumulations of every kind pertaining to the last interglacial 

 epoch, must have been greatly denuded during that succeeding 

 and final Ice Age. We may readily understand how underneath 

 the mer de glace that covered so wide a region in Europe all the 

 more or less loose beds of clay, sand, gravel, turf, etc, would 

 tend to be rudely pushed forward and ground up with the 

 bottom-moraine of the ice. Here and there, perhaps, a patch 

 of some river- or lake- deposit might be preserved — but this 

 would be exceptional — at least in mountainous countries like 

 Xorway, Scotland, and the hilly parts of England and Ireland. 

 But in lower-lying areas where the ice-flow met with no obstruc- 

 tion there would be less erosive action exerted, and we might 

 therefore expect to find in such districts somewhat more plen- 

 tiful relics of the last interglacial epoch, buried and preserved 

 under boulder-clay. Again, those regions that lay beyond the 

 reach of the mer de glace should exhibit their ancient lacustrine 

 and fluviatile deposits in a comparatively intact condition ; un- 

 less, indeed, where these have been subjected to the action of 

 the desolating floods and torrents that escaped from the melting 

 ice-sheet. In cases where such a fate has overtaken them, we 

 should expect to find the interglacial beds in great part re- 

 arranged, and often confusedly commingled with the shingle 

 and detritus swept forward by the torrents. In other places, 

 again, where they had been quietly overwhelmed by inundation- 

 water, they might exhibit no confusion, but appear perfectly 

 undisturbed below a less or greater thickness of loam, loss, or 



