﻿160 PLEISTOCENE MAMMALIA. 



presence of the Musk-sheep, the only arctic mammal found, the Mammoth, and tichorhine 

 Rhinoceros may be accounted for in the midst of the hardiest portion of the Pliocene 

 mammalia, the Red Deer, Horse, Urus, and others, and even with Bh. megarhinus, in the 

 briclcpits of Crayford. 



On the whole, therefore, there is a high probability that the fresh-water deposit at 

 Clacton and the Brickearths of the Thames Valley form the first terms of the Post-glacial 

 series, that is to say, of a series characterised by the invasion of Western and Central 

 Europe by the arctic group of mammals ; that they are of a higher antiquity than the 

 majority of British fliiviatile deposits ; and that they bridge over that interval between 

 the Pliocene and Post-glacial or Quaternary epochs, which is sharply marked in Britain by 

 Glacial phenomena, but which, in Erance and Italy, is not sharply defined. Such is the 

 nature of the evidence on which we have founded our belief that these two deposits are 

 more ancient than the ordinary Post-glacial brickearths and gravels, and that they con- 

 sequently present the most ancient traces of the Cave Lion in Britain. 



The Cave Lion has also been found in association with the Pliocene Machairodus in 

 Kent's Hole, but the occurrence of that animal does not stamp the Pliocene age of the 

 cave, because of the enormous number of Reindeer, Cave Hysenas, Mammoths, ticho- 

 rhine Rhinoceroses, and other characteristic post-glacial mammals that were also found. 

 Its presence can only be accounted for on the supposition that it strayed up northwards 

 from its southern habitat very much in the same way as its congener the Tiger does now 

 in Northern Asia. There is, indeed, nothing more improbable in the idea that the 

 Machairodus of Kent's Hole preyed upon the Reindeer of the neighbourhood than that 

 a Tiger specifically the same with that of India should at times prey upon the same 

 animal in Siberia at the present day. It proves, however, one important fact, that while 

 the Post-glacial fauna were in full possession of the British area, the Pliocene fauna, of 

 which it is a member, occupied a zoological province further to the south. 



What, then, is the range of the Cave Lion in time in Great Britain ? It is found neither 

 in the Forest-bed nor in the ancient land-surface underlying the marine Crag of Norfolk 

 and Suffolk, whence the water-worn remains of terrestrial Mammalia were ultimately 

 derived. It first occurs at Clacton, Ilford, and Crayford, and it subsequently lived in 

 incredible numbers in the South of England during the occupation of the country by 

 the arctic group of Mammals. At the close of the Post-glacial or Quaternary period 

 it disappeared utterly, no trace of it having yet been found in any prehistoric deposit. 



§ 4. Continental range. — Nor on the mainland of Europe has the Cave Lion been 

 proved to have existed during the Pliocene epoch. In Erance it has been found in the 

 caverns of Echenoz and Eovent (in Haut-Saone), of Gondenaus (Doubs), of Lunelviel 

 (Herault), of Pondres and St. Julien d'Ecosse (Garde) j 1 and in that of Aurignac described 



1 Gervais, ' Paleontologie Francaise,' p. 123. 



