We are not sure that monkeys and apes frequented the forests of Southern Europe in the early Quaternary; but it is certain that the African elephant wandered in large troops over its plains and the hippo potamus major) bathed in its rivers. With these were associated several species of rhinoceros and numerous large and ferocious felines. One of the most characteristic of the latter was the formidable "sabre toothed tiger" (lacherrodns latidens); it was of great size and strength, armed with long superior canine teeth projecting beyond the line of the jaw and shaped like the blade of a sabre, whence its name. This fear inspiring species of the Carnivora disappeared from Europe when the cold of the Ice Age set in.
Scarcely less terrifying to the unarmed men of that day must have been the "cave lion" (Fells sfickea) and the "cave bear" (Ursits sficlerus); and both of them were much more numerous. Indeed, the remains of the cave bear are so abundant in the early Quaternary that the French geologist M. Lartet has proposed for that period the distinctive name "The Age of the Great Cave Bear." was a huge animal, surpassing in size the grizzly bear of the Rocky Mountains by fully one-fourth. It was so plentiful that the remains of over eight hundred individuals have been taken from one cavern, and its bones have been unearthed in almost every country of Europe and also in Northern Africa. Beginning its life as a species in the Pliocene of the Tertiary, it appears to have survived far into the Ice Age of the Quaternary.
The cave lion was the largest of all the felines of which paleontology tells us. It possessed in an exaggerated degree the traits by which the lion is distinguished from the tiger. The period when it was most widely disseminated was in the earliest Quaternary. It has left its remains in England, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy.
These, and other species which might be named, point to a climatic condition for the early Quaternary approaching a subtropical, oceanic character, somewhat similar to that found at present in the Bermuda Islands or the Azores. The latter are almost in the latitude of New York and Madrid, but enjoy a climate which ripens in perfection such tropical plants as the sugar-cane and coffee. This fact illustrates that a high latitude does not necessarily imply a frigid climate. Cold or warmth depends much more on the disposition of the ocean-currents and the position of land- and water-areas than on any other factor. All the climatic variations recorded by geology can be explained by geograph ical hypotheses.
Fauna of The Middle and Laic climate of the whole of Europe nnArwent a gradual refrigeration during the middle and late Quaternary until the advancing glaciers covered most of the habitable land of the northern portion. This was accompanied by a striking change
in the character of the principal animals. Those types which, as we have just seen, recall the denizens of the Torrid Zone gave way to others whose homes we must seek amid the snows of Arctic latitudes.
The largest and most remarkable of these was the "mammoth" (Elc plias primicenills, p1. r, fig. 29). It was also one of the most abundant and widely distributed. Its massive tusks, enormous teeth, and heavy bones have been exhumed in large quantities in France, Belgium, Ger many, Russia, Siberia, and the north-western portion of North America. There are many reasons for believing it to have been an animal not only adapted to a cold climate, hut one that shunned the heat. Very few of its remains have been discovered in Italy, none in the Iberian Penin sula. They occur most abundantly on the bleak plains of Northern Siberia, where ivory tusks are so abundant that for generations they have formed a staple article of local traffic. There also it survived the longest, and we have good reason to believe that the last representatives of the species were alive nearly to the commencement of the historic period.
In 1877 there were discovered near the village of Karetcharovo, in Central Russia, bones of the mammoth in immediate contiguity with stone implements of the Neolithic Age. But we scarcely needed such evidence, for bodies of the animal in an almost complete state of preservation have been not unfrequently reported from the plains of Northern Siberia. The most celebrated discovery of the kind was made by a Tungusian hunter in the year 1799. In his journeys near the mouth of the river Lena he came across a carcase encased in ice and thus very perfectly preserved. Fortunately, the find came to the knowledge of a member of the Academy of St. Petersburg, who rescued most of it, and gave a careful description of the animal as it was when discovered. It was a male, with a long inane on his neck; the skin was of a dark-gray color, covered with reddish wool and coarse, long black hair. The entire skeleton was sixteen feet four inches in length, and its height was nine feet four inches. The tusks measured along the curve nine feet four inches, and in a straight line from the base to the point three feet seven inches. The skin was so thick and heavy that it required ten persons to lift the one-half of it which was still preserved.