ISLAND LIFE. 



[part I. 



istic of temperate latitudes {EhjpJias antiquus and Rhinoceros 

 hemitcechus). But when it occurs in gravels or in water-borne 

 cave-deposits it is sometimes associated with the mammoth, the 

 woolly rhinoceros and the reindeer, animals which, as certainly, 

 imply a cold or even arctic climate. This difference is intelligible 

 if we consider that the hyaena which carried the bones of all 

 these animals into the caves, is itself indicative of a mild 

 climate, and that there is nothing to cause the remains of 

 animals of successive epochs to be intermingled in such caves. 

 In the gravels however it is very different. During the warm 

 periods the rivers would be inhabited by hippopotami, and the 

 adjacent plains by elephants and horses, and their remains 

 would be occasionally imbedded in deposits formed during 

 floods. But when the cold period came on and these had 

 passed southward, the same river banks would be grazed by 

 mammoths and reindeer whose remains would sometimes inter- 

 mingle with those of the animals which preceded them. It is 

 to be noted, also, that in many of these river-deposits there 

 are proofs of violent floods causing much re-arrangement of 

 materials, so that the remains of the two periods would be thus 

 still further intermingled.^ 



The fact of the hippopotamus having lived at 54° N. Lat. in 

 England, quite close to the time of the glacial epoch, is absolutely 

 inconsistent with a mere gradual amelioration of climate from 

 that time till the present day. The immense quantity of vege- 

 table food which this creature requires, implies a mild and 

 uniform climate with ha,rdly any severe winter ; and no theory 

 that has yet been suggested renders this possible except that of 

 alternate cold and warm periods during the glacial epoch itself. 

 In order that the hippopotamus could have reached Yorkshire 

 and retired again as the climate changed, we may suppose it to 

 have been a permanent inhabitant of the lower Rhone, between 

 which river and the Hhine there is an easy communication by 

 means of the Doubs and the 111, some of whose tributaries 

 approach within a mile or two of each other about fifteen miles 

 south-west of Mulhausen. Thence the passage would be easy 



1 A. Tylor, on " Quaternary Gravels." Quarterly Journal of Geological 

 Society of London, 1869, pp. 83 -95 (woodcuts). 



