DE. HICKS-—PEE-HISTOKIC MAN IN BEIT AIN. 
153 
think little of his necessities, he had to defend himself against the 
rigour of the climate, and to be constantly on the alert to supply 
his wants. The indolent tropical savage would not migrate towards 
such an inhospitable region by any sudden impulse, and it is prob¬ 
able that the man of the reindeer period whom we first meet with 
in this country, though possibly the descendant of a more tropical 
race, had attained to his condition through a very gradual process. 
The close of the Tertiary era iu the north-west of Europe, it 
should be said, was marked by such an increase in the severity of 
the climate that the southern forms gradually migrated from this 
country, and animals of northern types appeared on the scene. It 
is in the deposits which accumulated at this date that relics of 
man are first found, in association with the remains of animals of 
northern origin, and of a few southern forms such as the lion and 
hysena, which still remained. Researches which have been carried 
on in recent years in the Yictoria Cave in Yorkshire (described by 
Mr. Tiddeman*) and in the Efynnon Beuno and Cae Gwyn Caves in 
North Wales,f have proved conclusively that the northern animals 
and man reached this country at the beginning of the Glacial period, 
and not, as has hitherto been generally supposed, immediately after 
that period. The settlement of this question is of great import¬ 
ance, as it not only carries the advent of man back to a far remoter 
period than was before supposed, but it also shows that the cave¬ 
man is at least of equal antiquity with the man of the older valley- 
gravels. Prof. Prestwich, our greatest authority on these questions, 
has recently stated that, in consequence of the newly-accumulated 
evidence showing the occurrence of human relics in Glacial times, 
he has been led to change his views as to the age of the high-level 
gravels in the Somme, Seine, Thames, and Avon valleys, and that 
he is now disposed to assign these bfeds to the earlier part of the 
Glacial period, when the ice-sheet was advancing. TJntil these 
explorations the caverns in this country had furnished evidence 
only to show that man must have been contemporary with the 
extinct Mammalia already referred to. But these more recent 
researches have proved, not only that these animals and man lived 
together, but that they must have been here before the country 
was covered with ice and snow, hence long before the submergence 
which took place at the climax of the Ice age, when the mountains 
in Wales, which, as already shown, had previously stood at a great 
elevation, were submerged to such a depth that marine sands con¬ 
taining shells were deposited upon them, and are now found at heights 
of about 1500 feet above the present sea-level. At this time our 
islands, which in the early period were joined to the Continent and 
extended much farther out into the Atlantic, at least as far as the 
100-fathom line, are supposed to have been almost completely sub¬ 
merged, leaving only a group of islands consisting of the higher 
parts of our mountain-lands. 
* ‘ Brit. Assoc. Report,’ 1874, p. 133 ; 1875, p. 166. 
f Hicks, ‘Brit. Assoc. Report,’ 1886, pp. 219 and 839 ; 1887, pp. 301 and 
912; ‘ Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc.,’ vol. slii, p. 3 (1886); vol. xliv, p. 561 (1888). 
