THE FOEMER EAXGE OF THE EEI^sDEER IN EUROPE. 
35 
Cuvier remarked, adapted for enduring any climate ; it is clear, 
therefore, that you could not infer climate in past time from 
the presence of any of these animals. This objection is indeed 
partly true : the carnivora can live wherever they can obtain 
their prey, climate being of secondary importance; but the food 
of the herbivores is directly dependant upon climate, and as 
vegetation is divided into regular zones, according to the tem- 
perature in each, so the herbivores are also divided, each species 
being fitted best to live on the food which surrounds it, while 
the carnivores can thrive in any of the zones. We can there- 
fore reasonably infer the climate from the study of the herbivores. 
We propose to trace the reindeer from its first known ap- 
pearance in western and middle Europe to the present day, 
from the Pleistocene, through the Pre-historic, into the Historic 
period, and draw whatever inferences we can as to climate. The 
identity of the fossil with the recent reindeer first surmised by 
M. Gruettard, in the first quarter of the present century, was 
proved by Professor Owen in 1834 ; and since that time ample 
materials have been accumulated for determining the former 
raoge of the animal. 
The Pleistocene period in France, Grermany and Britain is 
divisible into three great epochs ; the first of these, or the Pre- 
glacial, is that during which the land was more highly elevated 
above the sea than at the present day. Britain formed part of 
the mainland of Europe, and the character of the fauna shovs^s 
that the climate was, to say the least, temperate. This latter 
condition w^as probably the cause of the non-existence of the 
reindeer in Pre-glacial Europe ; although according to the views 
lately put forth by Professor Brandt of St. Petersburgh, it was 
living at the time in the colder climate of Northern Asia. Then 
the land was depressed, and hill and valley alike sank beneath 
the waves of the sea ; the temperature also was lowered, so that 
glaciers flowed down the hills of Cumbria, Wales, and Scotland, 
and all the high mountains of Europe ; and icebergs deposited 
their load of sand, mud, and fragments of rock throughout the 
greater part of Eussia, the lowlands of Grermany, and the centre 
of England. Whether this change of temperature was gradual 
or not is an open question, and probably must ever remain so. 
Had it, however, taken place before the depression of the land, 
the reindeer would most certainly have been found in pre-glacial 
or glacial deposits ; for as there are no geographical barriers in 
the way, the arctic group of animals dwelling in Siberia would 
have migrated into Europe as the conditions of life became more 
and more suitable for them. There is not, however, the slightest 
trace of any of them in any deposit which is undoubtedly pre- 
glacial or glacial, and therefore the inference may be drawn that 
before the lowering of the temperature in Central Europe the 
