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THE TUNDRAS AND STEPPES OF PREHISTORIC EUROPE.

human relics. It yielded some 14,000 flint implements, and a large number of worked bones and antlers, comprising needles, bodkins and awls, chisels, harpoons, whistles, and other objects. Bits of wood worked and charred, and fragments of worked and unworked lignite were also obtained. Besides these, drawings and patterns were found on reindeer antlers, on bones, and on tablets of limestone, while many shells, fossils, and teeth of the arctic fox and the glutton were met with, bored and pierced, as if they had been used for necklaces and other personal ornaments. The presence throughout this relic bed of nuclei or cores from which flints had been struck, of abundant chips and splinters, of old hearths, ashes, and burnt bones, shows that the reindeer hunters were for a long time constant occupants of the rock shelter.

Turning to the abundant animal remains, we find that these represent no fewer than 49 species, viz, 30 mammals, 15 birds, 3 amphibians, and 1 fish. All the most characteristic tundra forms—the banded lemming and its peculiar associates—are now absent, and in their place we find a true steppe fauna. Amongst the new arrivals are red suslik, pika, and true hamster, and associated with these are such constant visitors of the steppes as manul cat, wild horse, dzeggetai, and various birds. Certain forms which appear in the lemming bed are still represented, as arctic fox, glutton, and others—all of which, however, in our own day range south of the true tundras. Their presence therefore is not out of keeping with the characteristic steppe forms. It is clear therefore that in north Switzerland a tundra fauna was eventually succeeded by a steppe fauna.

Toward the top of the yellow relic bed once more new arrivals begin to put in an appearance, and their presence seems to show that the climate was again gradually changing, for they include red deer, roe deer, wild boar, squirrel, pine marten, and beaver, all of which belong to a forest fauna.

The next stratum in succession is the breccia bed. This consists of small fragments of limestone, either lying loosely together or cemented by calcareous matter. Relics of man were not so common in this bed, although occasional splintered bones and flint implements occurred all through it, and in places were even abundant. About midway between the top and bottom of the breccia occurred a layer of dark-earth, in which human relics and the remains of various rodents were conspicuous. It would seem that during the accumulation of the breccia bed small groups of reindeer hunters only now and again visited the rock shelter; it was evidently not so continually occupied as it had been. The animal remains met with in the stratum undoubtedly tell a tale of changing climatic conditions. Amongst the species represented are reindeer, pika, hare, squirrel-tailed dormouse, garden dormouse, squirrel, water rat, various voles, shrews, mole, ermine, marten, and others. This is obviously a mixed fauna—a few of the steppe animals being still present, but the larger number of the species are forest forms. The fauna of