246 
sense of personal danger ; since, with all the resources of intellect 
on the side of man in this war with the brute creation, the advan- 
tage must sometimes have preponderated in favour of the huge 
beasts whom he daringly encountered.* * * § 
“ Some doubtless oft the prowling monsters gaunt, 
Grasped in their jaws abrupt — whence through the groves. 
The woods, the mountains, they vociferous groaned, 
Destined, thus living, to a living tomb.” 
I have been studying the well-executed drawings of the bones 
of the Felis spelaja by Bassin, t'vhich this artist has presented side 
by side with those of the modern lion, dwarfing our present king 
of beasts into comparative insignificance. Yet this was possibly 
not the worst enemy they had to encounter. J In other respects, 
the life of these antediluvian men must have remarkably resembled 
those of the Esquimaux ; a life full of animal enjoyment, the praise 
of which we have heard from one of our leading philosophers at a 
meeting of the Britisli Association at Exeter. 
23. The following is a list of the great mammifers against whom 
man would have to contend in this Palaeolithic age :§ — 
The great cavern Bear ( Ursns spelams). 
The cave Hyena ( Hyena spelcca). 
The great Cat of the caverns {Fells spelcva) . 
The Elephant or Mammoth {Elephas primigenius). 
The Rhinoceros with divided nostrils {Rhinoceros tichorinm). 
The gigantic Stag, or Irish Elk (Megaceros hibernicus). 
The Reindeer ( Germs tarandus). 
The Bison {Bison europcvus). 
The Urus {Bos primigenius). 
24. M. Lenormant remarks that “nothing is more instructive to 
the Christian who regards things in the light of the sacred tradition, 
than the spectacle furnished by the discoveries of geology and of 
palaeontology in the Tertiary and Quaternary deposits. The con- 
demnation pronounced by Divine anger is manifested in a striking 
manner in the life so hard and difficult which the first tribes of 
humanity then led ; scattered as they were over the surface of the 
globe in the midst of the last convulsions of nature, and by the 
side of the formidable animals against which it was needful for 
them to defend themselves continually. It seems that the weight 
of this condemnation weighed more, heavily on them than it has done 
since. And when science shows us, soon after the arrival of the 
* See Appendix (D). f See Sciences Nat. Zool vol. xiv. 1870. 
J Compare the sabre-toothed feline, the Machairodus latidens, found in 
Kent’s Hole, &c. See W. B. Dawkins’ Cave-hunting, p. 331. 
§ Lartet, Sur la Coexistence de V Homme ct dcs grandsMammifcrs fossiles, 
Sc. Hat. Zool., t. xv. p. 217. 1861. 
