362 HISTORICAL PALEONTOLOGY. 



the South American continent — namely, the '' Platyrhine " 

 Monkeys. 



We still have very briefly to consider the occurrence of 

 Man in Post-Pliocene deposits ; but before doing so, it will be 

 well to draw attention to the evidence afforded by the Post- 

 Pliocene Mammals as to the climate of Western Europe at 

 this period. The chief point which we have to notice is, that 

 a considerable revolution of opinion has taken place on this 

 point. It was originally believed that the presence of such 

 animals as Elephants, Lions, the Rhinoceros, and the Hippo- 

 potamus afforded an irrefragable proof that the climate of 

 Europe must have been a warm one, at any rate during Post- 

 Glacial times. The existence, also, of numbers of Mammoths 

 in Siberia, was further supposed to indicate that this high tem- 

 perature extended itself very far north. Upon the whole, how- 

 ever, the evidence is against this view. Not only is there great 

 difficulty in supposing that the Arctic conditions of the Glacial 

 period were immediately followed by anything warmer than a 

 cold-temperate climate ; but there is nothing in the nature of 

 the Mammals themselves which would absolutely forbid their 

 living in a temperate climate. The Hippopotamus major, though 

 probably clad in hair, offers some difficulty — since, as pointed 

 out by Professor Busk, it must have required a cHmate suffi- 

 ciently warm to insure that the rivers were not frozen over in the 

 winter ; but it was probably a migratory animal, and its occur- 

 rence may be accounted for by this. The Woolly Rhinoceros 

 and the Mammoth are known with certainty to have been pro- 

 tected with a thick covering of wool and hair ; and their ex- 

 tension northwards need not necessarily have been limited by 

 anything except the absence of a sufficiently luxuriant vege- 

 tation to afford them food. The great American Mastodon, 

 though not certainly known to have possessed a hairy covering, 

 has been shown to have lived upon the shoots of Spruce and 

 Firs, trees characteristic of temperate regions — as shown by the 

 undigested food which has been found with its skeleton, oc- 

 cupying the place of the stomach. The Lions and Hyaenas, 

 again, as shown by Professor Boyd Dawkins, do not indicate 

 necessarily a warm climate. Wherever a sufficiency of her- 

 bivorous animals to supply them with food can live, there they 

 can live also ; and they have therefore no special bearing upon 

 the question of climate. After a review of the whole evidence, 

 Professor Dawkins concludes that the nearest approach at the 

 present day to the Post-Pliocene climate of Western Europe 

 is to be found in the climate of the great Siberian plains which 

 stretch from the Altai Mountains to the Frozen Sea. "Covered 



