THE GLACIAL-THEORIES. 
105 
The above statements are also of a zoogeographical — faunistical — 
importance, inasmuch as they throw a light upon the origin of the various 
elements (species) constituting our recent faunae. To enter into a 
detailed discussion of such problems would deviate us however too much 
from our present subject. With respect to this question I should only 
like to emphasise that we should be cautious in supposing a general 
eastern origine of our European Vertebrates. 1 We saw that, owing to the 
extension resp. regression of the ice, two principal faunistical „migra¬ 
tions“ took place: the first from N to S, the second, just opposite, from 
S to N. 
As regards the steppe fauna , the majority of its elements might he 
regarded as endemic. It must he observed however that there exists another 
contingent of Pleistocene steppe elements, bearing a decidedly eastern 
character, so that a partial migration from E to W could not be denied. 
As far as we are informed, the eastern parts of Asia were not covered 
by inlandice. It is most probable that the fauna and flora were submit¬ 
ted there to quite a different kind of transformation, the steppe type 
having been earlier developed than in Europe. But it is also probable 
that the withdrawel of the ice has been a more rapid one in Western 
Europe, — a consequence of its suboceanic climate, — than in the 
eastern parts, characterised by rather continental climatic conditions. It 
is owing to this circumstance, as well as to the fact of the most different 
faunae having been gathered on a relatively small ground in consequence 
of the extending glaciation, that the territories from which the ice 
withdrew were populated at first by the inhabitants of the neighbouring 
and southern parts, and only later on hv some eastern elements. That 
is to say that the Pleistocene fauna of the European steppes must differ 
a good deal from the synchronical fauna which existed on the Asiatic 
steppes, whilst the Present Russian steppes include the European 
Pleistocene steppe elements as well. If the gaps, occurring in our — as 
yet very unsatisfactory — knowledge about the Pleistocene fauna of the 
Asiatic steppes, could he filled up, the quoted suppositions — I should 
rather like to call them statements — could he definitively proved . 
The hypothesis developed in the present paper with regard to the 
glacial period and its biological consequences, is based only in as much 
upon a more safe ground than the preceeding opinions, as the fossil 
faunae constituted its point of departure, whilst the theories emitted by 
1 The same thing has been also stated by Dr. baron G. J. de Fejékváry, on 
p. 427—430 of: Contr. to a Monogr. on fossil Varanidae and onMegalanidae. Ann. Mus. 
Nat. Hung., XIV. Budapest, 1918. 
