The Range of the Late Pleistocene Mammals over Britain and Ireland.
If the dotted surface of the Map, Fig. 32, be examined, representing the areas in which the remains of the late Pleistocene animals have been found, it will be noted that they are distributed very irregularly in the river deposits. The greater part of Wales, as well as the hilly parts of northern Yorkshire, including Cumberland and Westmoreland, have not as yet furnished any evidence of the former existence of these animals. In Scotland the mammoth and the reindeer have been met with in the lowlands;[1] and the former has been discovered, according to Mr. Paton,[2] in Caithness.
In Ireland the mammoth has been found in the counties of Cavan, Galway, Antrim, and Waterford, and in the Shandon cave, near Dungarvan, in the first of these counties, along with the grisly bear, wolf, fox, horse, stag, and alpine hare.[3] This irregularity in the distribution of the animal remains is intimately connected with the geographical and climatal changes which were going on in the obscure and complicated portion of the late Pleistocene age known as the glacial period.
On taking every point of view into consideration, Mr. Jamieson's opinion,[4] that the mammoth was in Scotland before the glacial period, seems to me to be true; and it is highly probable that all the Irish mammalia mentioned above are preglacial. In that case these animals must be looked upon as the representatives of a fauna,
