Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 99 CHAPTER V. THE MAMMOTH IN EUROPE. Multaque in ea (Hercynia sylva) genera ferarum nasci constat quoe n-li- quis in locis visa non 'int.?Ciesar De Bell. Gall. vi. 25. Distribution of the Mammoth in Europe?Identity of the Mammalian fauna of the Mammoth age in Central and Eastern Europe and in Northern Asia?Fauna of tne Mediterranean region in the Mammoth age?France and' England a neutral zone between the two districts?Remains of Arctic and Southern animals found side by side?Theories of successive faunas and of interglacial periods untenable?Theories of annusl and periodical migrations similarly untenable?Plants and sedentary molluscs from northern and southern latitudes found together?The only possible conclusion that the forms lived and died together. In the previous chapter I have tried to prove that the abnormal circumstance of the Mammoth and its companions occupying two areas now so contrasted in climate and other respects as Europe and Siberia, is really explained by the climate and physical conditions of Siberia having greatly altered since the Mnmmoth lived. If we discard this aberrant factor from the problem, and remember that Siberia was then, as Europe is now, marked by temperate conditions of climate, we shall have simplified matters considerably, for, putting climate aside, Asia and Eastern Europe really form one physical province. To most of us it is difficult to realize how purely artificial the terms Europe and Asia are. How they correspond to nothing, either in historical or physical geography. The Ural mountains form no frontier that has been of the slightest interest in history, while as a physical boundary they are of even less importance. Their moderate height and frequent passes have formed no barriers, either botanical or zoological, an...