A Day's Elephant Hunting in Essex. 47
and Cyrena fluminalis seems to-day to be cut off from
Europe and Northern Asia by nearly the same barriers as
those which confine the great pachydermata. It ranges,
at the present day, from the Nile through Syria to the
Himalayas and China.
Let us first clearly state what it is we have to ex-
plain. The problem is not, How could the musk-ox,
mammoth, and reindeer, and the hippopotamus and
southern elephant live together in one and the same area
during the same year? It is this, How could these animals
frequent one and the same area within such a period of
time as would account for their being found in a common
grave ?
Our investigation into the history of the Ilford northern
fauna has revealed to us a geographical condition of our
country in the Pleistocene period which more than half
explains the presence of the sub-tropical species. First, as
we have seen, there was in Pleistocene Europe no great
physical barrier, such as the modern German Ocean and the
English Channel, shutting off England from the Continent.
Our land was joined to the Europasian Continent, and
even to Africa. Secondly, Man, although, perhaps, return-
ing to the re-born land, had not yet multiplied into the
communities which have since gradually restricted the
range of the ferae naturae, reducing their numbers and extir-
pating whole species.
The migrant tendencies of animals were doubly favoured
in this Continental Period of our land's history. The geo-
graphical arrangements were, perhaps, the most favourable
that can be conceived for enabling animals to visit the
extreme limit of their climatal range, and no great human
populations yet disputed their possession.
There were doubtless times when, for years in succession,
the glaciers had disappeared, the climate was equable, and
summer and winter were no longer marked by wide differ-
ences of temperature. That these episodes were not of
long duration is shown by the mingling together of the
bones of hippopotamus and mammoth in the same level of
the old river-beds in, which they are found fossil to-day. A