THE FOTxMEK llANGE OF THE REINDEEH IN EUROPE. 
45 
that time is the migration of the reindeer to the north and 
east. 
The date of the disappearance of the reindeer from any given 
country affords us an index to the climate at the time. Long 
before Caesar landed on our shores the arctic conditions favour- 
able for their life had vanished away. When Caesar wrote his 
Commentaries they were still to be found in the north of the great 
Hercynian forest. They had already departed from the low country 
of Gfaul. During the middle ages the climate gradually changed 
in Grermany, until, in the middle of the seventeenth century, 
the reindeer had even forsaken Denmark. In Caithness, how- 
ever, the most northern and inclement portion of our island, 
hemmed in on the one hand by the sea, and on the other by the 
continually encroaching herds of red-deer, they lingered long 
after they had disappeared from Graul, until at last they became 
extinct, probably about the beginning of the thirteenth century. 
The cause of the gradual amelioration of climate in modern 
times is generally attributed to the draining of morasses and 
the cutting down of the forests. On this point, however, the 
former range of the reindeer gives most conclusive testimony. 
Before the hand of man had made any impression on the vast 
forests that overshadowed Grermany and Britain, the animal had 
commenced its northward retreat, and therefore the climatal 
change must have been going on at that time. We cannot 
therefore ascribe the change to the industry of man, but to some 
great cause operating through an inconceivably long time, from 
the Glacial epoch of intense arctic severity down to the tempe- 
rate climate of the present day. It is indeed but a return to 
the order of things in Pre-glacial times. The Glacial epoch came 
in abnormally, so to speak, disturbing the temperature of the 
northern hemisphere, and driving the animals that dwelt in that 
area before it. It lasted an inconceivably long time, so long, 
indeed, that very many of the European pre-glacial animals be- 
came extinct, and it left its impress in the presence of the musk, 
sheep, reindeer, marmot and lemming, among the post-glacial 
mammals. As the climate became warmer they disappeared, 
and had not the hand of man intervened, there is every proba- 
bility that the wild animals of a far more southern character 
would now be living in Europe, such as the common hy^na 
and the lion. The cause of the great refrigeration of our 
climate is still unknown ; but the most philosophical explanation 
is that brought before the Eoyal Society, in 1866, by Mr. John 
Evans, F.E.S., viz. the alteration of the earth’s axis of rotation, 
consequent on the elevation or depression of some part of its 
crust, which must necessarily destroy the equilibrium. 
