534 PREHISTORIC EUROPE. 



harvest of discovery awaits the labours of the philosophical 

 naturalist in this field of inquiry. 1 



At what stage of the Postglacial Period did Neolithic man 

 enter our continent? There is no reason to believe that he 

 made his appearance before the climate of Central Europe had 

 lost its arctic character. His relics in that region are never 

 found associated with remains of the arctic or northern group of 

 mammals. But man was certainly contemporaneous with the 

 reindeer in the north of Scotland. This, however, may be no 

 proof of extreme antiquity if it be true, as some writers suppose, 

 that the reindeer was hunted in Caithness by the Jarls of 

 Orkney in the twelfth century. Prom the fact that remains of 

 this animal have never been found associated with Neolithic 

 relics in Central or Southern Scotland, we may reasonably suppose 

 that it had already retired to the uplands of the north before 

 the advent of the Neolithic people. How far south it ranged 

 upon the Continent in Neolithic times we cannot tell. No trace 

 of it has been found in connection with the lake-dwellings of 

 Switzerland or the kitchen-middens of Denmark. Had it been 

 still a denizen of Central Europe in early Neolithic times we 

 might well have expected to meet with its remains in some of 



1 There is much that is highly suggestive to the geologist in Professor Engler's 

 recently published work ( Versuch einer Entwicklungsgeschichte der Pflanzenwelt, 

 etc. ), and he accounts sufficiently well for the present general distribution of the 

 flora. He admits, however, that a wide field still lies open for the working out 

 of the details. Should the views of postglacial climatic and geographical changes 

 set forth in these pages eventually be established, they will, I think, tend to 

 modify some of Dr. Engler's conclusions. The modifications of the flora brought 

 about by the vicissitudes of Glacial times are so strongly marked that they must 

 tend to obscure the later changes induced by the less-pronounced climatic muta- 

 tions of the Postglacial period. Nevertheless, I cannot doubt that a detailed 

 analysis of the botanical evidence would show that the phenomena characteristic 

 of the postglacial deposits of Northern and North-western Europe have their 

 analogues in the present distribution of the plants of the middle, and perhaps even 

 of the southern, regions. It is also much to be desired that botanists should work 

 out more fully than has yet been done the structure of peat-bogs. The admirable 

 results already obtained by Steenstrup, Nathorst, Blytt, Fliche, and others, only 

 show how much more yet remains to be accomplished. It is not too much to say 

 that the history of the passage from Glacial to Postglacial times is still in large 

 measure locked up in those bogs and moors which cover such vast areas in our 

 continent. 



