Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/125

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CHAP. V.]
INCOMING SPECIES OF TEMPERATE HABIT.
97

vus Browni) discovered at Clacton. The bison, now preserved from extermination in a half-wild state in the imperial forests in Lithuania, and living in freedom in the Urals and Caucasus, roamed over the whole of Europe, as far to the north-west as Yorkshire. Its bones and teeth, found in northern Siberia and in Eschscholtz Bay, and other localities in North America, prove that in former times the herds, now rapidly being destroyed by the hunters in the tract of country extending from New Mexico into the British Dominions, were conterminous

Fig. 20.—Canine of Grisly Bear, Windy Knoll, Castleton, 1/1

with those of Asia. From Behring's Straits to Italy and Spain the remains of the bison are very generally found with those of the horse. The latter animal, as well as the urus, now only lives under the care of man. Among the incoming carnivores belonging to the temperate zone, the most important is the grisly bear (Fig. 20), the fossil remains of which, according to Professor Busk, are met with from Gibraltar, in the south-west, as far to the north as Britain and Belgium. At the present time the brown and grisly bears inhabit the same regions in North America, and we need therefore feel no surprise that they should be found together in the Pleistocene