1 62 PROF. E. HULL, ON THE SPREAD OF EXISTING ANIMALS 
origin, showing the ancient extent of the old continental shelf — now 
submerged — which once united the whole of the British Isles with 
the Continent of Europe. Dr. Woodward referred to the former 
vastly-extended range of the fauna of Europe, e.g., the Hippopotamus, 
inhabiting the rivers, lakes, and coasts and islands of the Mediter- 
ranean seaboard, and the greater part of England up to Leeds in 
Yorkshire, and the French, Spanish and Italian areas ; the British 
and Italian forms attaining the size of the largest living 
hippopotamus ; while those found in Malta, Sicily, Crete, Samos, 
etc., were all pigmy forms, like the associated pigmy elephants on 
those islands. The mammoth Eleplias primigenius occurred 
abundantly in the British Isles and on the Dogger Bank and the 
Eastern English Coasts, proving that the vast adjacent area now 
covered by the North Sea and the Straits of Dover was then a part 
of the mainland. Thousands of elephant remains had here been 
obtained during the past hundred years, but many were destroyed 
bjf the fishermen because of the damage done to their nets. The 
reindeer had an equally wide distribution, and was, like the 
mammoth, common to this country, France and Spain, over which it 
migrated to and fro. The Great Auk was certainly exterminated by 
the hand of man ; its remains being found in the “refuse heaps” 
within the prehistoric times, known as “ brocks,” in Caithness. 
There seems no justification for the view that the destruction of the 
mammoth over three continents (Europe, Asia and America) was a 
contemporaneous event, but rather, like many other mammals, it 
gradually became extinct owing to physical and climatal changes (and 
possibly partly to man himself). The vast accumulations of mammoth 
remains along the Asiatic coasts is readily explained by drownings ; 
owing to spring floods on the great Asiatic rivers, which flowing 
north, by the earlier melting of the snows and by the heavy spring 
rains in the south, caused great floods over vast areas near their 
mouths, which, being close to the Arctic Circle, were still full of ice. 
Hence the accumulations of elephant remains on the New Siberian 
Islands and the coasts and rivers of Northern Asia and the shores of 
Alaska. 
“ The gigantic Irish deer ” ( Cervas giganteus) was first found in a 
bog on the Isle of Man, and the specimen was presented by the Earl 
of Derby to the Edinburgh Museum. Another since obtained has 
been set up in the Castle at Douglas, Isle of Man. This great deer, 
