119 
suddenly vanished from Europe at the close of the palaeolithic 
age, and did not re-appear here until the neolithic age, when 
he entered Europe for the second time with some of his stone 
implements polished. In the interim there is no trace of man 
or beast. The statement is sufficient to refute the hypothesis. 
It supposes that (say) 100,000 years ago man (who had pre- 
viously spread over nearly the whole continent) was annihilated 
in (or driven out of) Europe ; and that he did not again set 
his foot here for about 95,000 years, when he suddenly ap- 
peared in sufficient numbers to re-occupy his deserted hunting- 
grounds, and to advance even farther north. Now, of course, 
it is necessary to explain in some sort where man was during 
this interregnum of the race in Europe. Why was Europe 
abandoned ? Was it uninhabitable ? Was there a similar 
interval in India, where we are told palaeolithic implements 
have been found, and in America, where it is claimed they 
have also been found ? Was the climate of Europe more 
severe than it had been in the Reindeer Epoch through which 
man had just lived, and which, according to archasology, was 
the most brilliant era in palaeolithic times ? Or did the being 
who presses now close upon the Pole, in Greenland and Siberia, 
find Europe too inhospitable during this 95,000 years for the 
adventurous spirit of a single colony ? 
29. There is no trace of the fauna of such a period. Where 
are the remains of the animals that lived in Europe during 
these 900 centuries ? Or, did the beast of the field, as well 
as man, abandon the continent ? Europe, we know, was by 
no means without its mammalian fauna, even during the 
terrible Reign of Ice ; and the bones of the mammoth and 
the reindeer are found, we are told, even in the till of Scot- 
land. Neither frost nor flood expelled or exterminated animal 
life then, and why should the country have been uninhabited 
after the glacial and post-glacial epochs when their harsh con- 
ditions had passed away ? 
30. Nor are there any geological formations cori’esponding 
to any such period. On the palasolithic beds of the caves rest 
the neolithic beds ; and on the gravels rests the peat. 
31. A good deal has been said about the change in the 
fauna ; but the present fauna of Siberia is almost identical 
with that in the same region in the days of the mammoth, and 
the change from the severe climate of the post-glacial epoch 
to the present mild climate accounts for the absence of many 
of the animals common in Europe at that time. As for the 
animals now peculiar to warmer regions, the cave-hyrena and 
the cave-lion are both admitted now to belong to existing 
species ; and the remains of the former (as well as the African 
