﻿INTRODUCTION. xlvii 



and Tungusian fur-hunters. In the northern part countless herds of reindeer, elks, foxes, 

 and wolverines make up for the poverty of vegetation by the rich abundance of animal 

 life. " Enormous flights of swans, geese, and ducks arrive in the spring, and seek deserts 

 where they may moult and build their nests in safety. Ptarmigan run in troops amongst 

 the bushes ; little snipes are busy along the brooks, and in the morasses ; the social crows 

 seek the neighbourhood of new habitations ; and when the sun shines in spring one may 

 even sometimes hear the cheerful note of the finch, and in autumn that of the thrush." 

 Throughout this region of woods a hardy, middle-sized breed of horses lives under the 

 mastership and care of man, and is eminently adapted to bear the severity of the climate. 

 Like the other northern quadrupeds they change their coats in the midst of summer. " They 

 perform most laborious journeys, often of three months' duration, with no other food than 

 the half-withered grass, which they get at by scraping away the snow with their hoofs, 

 and yet they are always in good condition." The only limit to their northern range is 

 the difficulty of obtaining food. The severity of the winter, through the southern portion 

 of this vast wooded area is almost compensated for by the summer heat and its marvellous 

 effect on vegetation. 



The hypothesis of a series of conditions obtaining in Pleistocene Western Europe 

 similar to those now found in this portion of Northern Asia, will alone satisfy the evidence 

 afforded by the fauna, and the deposits in which they are found. The contortion of the 

 gravels, and the angular state of the pebbles of which they are often composed, are, as 

 Mr. Prestwich infers, explicable only on the theory of ice having been formed in our rivers 

 in far larger quantities than at the present day; the one being the result of the grounding 

 of miniature bergs, the other of their melting away and depositing their burden of pebbles. 

 The large plateaux of brick-earths are probably the deposit of the floods caused by the 

 sudden melting of the winter snow, similar to that which Admiral Von Wrangel describes 

 in Northern Siberia, and Sir John Eranklin in the area north of the Canadian Lakes. 

 The winter cold would be sufficiently intense to allow of the northern group of mammalia 

 living in the winter, and even the musk-sheep (of which the remains are rare) might have 

 been obliged to leave the Pleistocene " tundras," and take shelter in the zone of the elk and 

 even the bison, in an unusually severe season. On the other hand, in the summer, the 

 animals that are now found in the temperate zones of Europe might advance even into 

 the country of the elk and the reindeer ; and even carnivora now confined to hot climates 

 find their way into the temperate zone of the day. Thus, the Hyana vulgaris, or common 

 living hyaena, is found fossil in the South of France, without penetrating as far north as 

 Britain, Prance, or Germany. 



In fine, the evidence afforded both by the fauna and deposits of the Pleistocene seems 

 to us to prove that the climate in Pleistocene Britain was more severe than it 

 is now ; that at a time when Britain formed a portion of the Europseo- Asiatic continent, 

 it more closely resembled that now obtaining in the fur-countries of Northern Asia than 



