Huntsville gazette., 1883-03-31
The Older Britain.

Britain formed part of the Continent
in the remote age known by the geolo-
gists as pleistocene or quaternary, and
the ancestors of our present wild ami.
mails, such as foxes, wild cats, martins.
staffs and roe deer, passed freely into ii
from the adjacent regions of France and
Germany, along with others which have
been exterminated here within the his
toric period, but which still live on the
mainland, such as the bear, wolf and
beaver. The land then stood six hun
dred feet above its present level, and the
sea-board now marked by the sunkeu
cliffs at the one hundred -fathom line
reached some two hundred miles to the
west OF Ireland, passing northward so
as to include the Hebrides and Shet-
lands, hugging closely the shores of the
Scandinavian peninsula, and forming q
narrow ford to the north of Denmark.
Southwark 1t swept across the mouth
of the present English Channel, past the
mouth of the Loire and Garonne, till it
came close to the precipitous shores of
the Bay of Biscay. To the west was the
Atlantic and to the east and south the
land extended rs far as the Mediterra-
mean and the steppes of Asiatic Russia.
The North Sea was broad open valley,
studded with few fresh water lakes,
like the meres of East Anglia, traversed
by the Thames and other eastern riv-
ers, as well as by the Rhine and the
Elbe, all of which discharge their waters
northward into the Scandinavian Gulf,
as it may be termed. A long line OF
chalk downs, reaching from Folkestone
and Margate across to ST. Pot and San
gate, formed the watershed separating
the valley of the North Sea from that Of
the Channel, through which the
rivers of the southern counties
and of northern France poured
their waters into the Atlantic.
A broad valley, too, stretched between
Ireland and our western coast, with a
deep aud narrow loch, some hundred
and fifty fathoms deep, severing it from
Scotland. The wild animals of the
Continent, tempted by the woodlands
and pastures of these fertile valleys,
freely passed into Britain, and have left
their remains in the river beds of gravel
and loan, not merely on the land, but
under the sea, from which they have
been dredged in vast numbers. Beside
the familiar animals above mentioned,
there were lions, panthers, hyenas, hip
popotami and others now only met with
in warm countries; reindeer, musk
sheep and wolverines, now only found
in the far north; horses, bisons and
elks, now living in temperate regions,
as well as strange, extinct animals, such
as the mammoth, the woolly rhinoce-
ros, and the cave bear These animals
migrated north and south, according to
the season, across the valleys of the
North Sea and of the Channel, and,
just as the migratory herds in America
are followed by the red Indian and those
of Northern Asia by the Siberian hunt
ers, so were they followed by the river
drift hunter, whose implements lie scat
tered over the whole of Europe south OF
the latitude of Yorkshire. In the course
of time, too, the highly equipped Cave
man crossed over to this country and
used the caverns for habitations. While
Southern and Eastern Britain was the
home of man and the animals he hunt
ed, the higher parts of Wales, Cambria
and of Scotland, and the greater portion
of Ireland were covered by glaciers,
which crept down into the lower
grounds, offering an impenetrable bar
rier to migration, and leaving behind
the transported blocks and grooved
rock surfaces which enable us to map
their ancient extent Contemporary Re.