(Cervus ungaceros or C. Hibernicus), the ten or twelve foot span of whose antlers must have put him to great disadvantage, and so proved one of the causes of his extinction.
Then comes the primitive ox (Bos primogenius), generally regarded as the progenitor of our present race of cattle, and found running wild in the forests of Germany as late as Cæsar's time.
The hippopotamus, found mostly in Italy and the south of France, is more rare. It is clearly allied to the species that now inhabit the tropics.
Remains of the cave-tiger or cave-lion (Felis spelæa)[1] have recently been found in various localities, though formerly but rarely.
Very significant as to the climate of Europe in this age is the presence of such species as the reindeer, musk-ox, and lemming,[2] which now inhabit only high northern latitudes, and of other species which are now peculiar to the moister heights of the Alps, e. g., the chamois, mountain-goat, and marmot. These were all once native to our plains and uplands.
The North American and European mammals of this period are very nearly identical. In place of and sometimes in addition to the mammoth, however, America had the equally immense mastodon (Mastodon giganteus or Ohioticus). Six almost perfect skeletons of it were discovered in Warren County, in Western New York, in 1845.[3] Their rude study of its remains suggested to the North American Indians the name of "Father of Buffaloes." The entire genus is wanting in the Diluvium of Europe, though several of its smaller species are represented in the Tertiary.
So far as is yet known, these are the most important contemporaries of primeval man in Europe. They are his competitors and enemies in the "struggle for existence," to meet which he must needs have had all his powers of body and of mind.
Now, it is important to remember that we find both these extinct animals' remains and man's bones and implements in the same deposits and caves of the Diluvial period; that is, that these animal and these human relics were contemporaneous, first as to their deposition, and
- ↑ The most recent studies ally it rather to the tiger than to the lion family.
- ↑ The Lapland or Norwegian marmot (Myodes lemmus and M. torquatus.)—Trans.
- ↑ The author has fallen into confusion, certainly, as to localities, and probably as to facts: 1. Warren County, New York, is in the east-northeast part of the State; 2. I have searched vainly for mention of precisely such a discovery as the text describes. In 1844, and in Warren County, New Jersey, was found the skeleton of the young female mastodon now at Cambridge, Mass., with the skulls of four others.
Three perfect skeletons were afterward dug from swamps near Newburg, New York, and described by Dr. Warren in his splendid work, "The Mastodon Giganteus of North America," (second edition, Boston, 4to, 1855). These are the richest "finds" of which I have been able to find any account.
On the distinction between the mammoth and the mastodon, and their several species, characteristics, remains, and place in paleontology, and Indian legends, see a capital article in the American Naturalist" vol. ii., pp. 23, et seq.—Trans.
