. The testimony of the rocks; . tes, meetwithin the British area. During at least the earlier times ofthe group, the temperature of our island seems to have beenvery much what it is now. As I have already had occasionto remark, the British oak flourished on its plains and lowerslopes, and the birch and Scotch fir on its hUls. And yetunder these famihar trees the lagomys or tailless hare, aform now mainly restricted to Siberia and the wilds of Nor-thern America, and the reindeer, an animal whose properhabitat at the present time is Lapland, were associated withforms that are now only to be foun
. The testimony of the rocks; . tes, meetwithin the British area. During at least the earlier times ofthe group, the temperature of our island seems to have beenvery much what it is now. As I have already had occasionto remark, the British oak flourished on its plains and lowerslopes, and the birch and Scotch fir on its hUls. And yetunder these famihar trees the lagomys or tailless hare, aform now mainly restricted to Siberia and the wilds of Nor-thern America, and the reindeer, an animal whose properhabitat at the present time is Lapland, were associated withforms that are now only to be found between the tropics,such as that of the hippopotamus and rhinoceros. These last,however, unequivocally of extinct species, seem to have beenadapted to live in a temperate climate; and we know fromthe famous Siberian specimen, that the British elephant,with its covering of long hair and closely-felted wool,was fitted to sustain the rigors of a very severe one. Itis surely a strange fact, but not less true than strange, Kg. HYENA SPEL^A. Cave Hyaena. (Pleistocene.) that since hill and dale assumed in Britain their present con-figuration, and the oak and birch flourished in its woods, 130 THE PALiEONTOLOGICAL there were caves in England haunted for ages by families ofhyaenas, — that they dragged into their dens with the car-casses of long extinct animals those of the still familiar deni-zens of om- hill-sides, and feasted, now on the lagomys, andnow on the common hare, — that they now fastened on thebeaver or the reindeer, and now upon the roebuck or thegoat. In one of these caves, such of the bones as projectedfrom the stiff soil have been actually worn smooth in a nar-row passage where the hyaenas used to come in contact withthem in passing out and in; and for several feet in depth thefloor beneath is composed almost exclusively of gnawedfragments, that still exhibit the deeply indented marks offormidable teeth. In the famous Kirkdale cave alone, partsof the skeletons
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