The principal changes in the fauna of Great Britain during the historic age are the extinction of the bear, wolf, beaver, reindeer, and wild boar, and the introduction of the domestic fowl, the pheasant, fallow-deer, ass, the domestic cat, the larger breed of oxen, and the common rat; and as this took place at different times, it is obvious that these animals enable us to ascertain the approximate date of the deposit in which their remains happen to occur. And for this purpose the following table[42] may be consulted:-- ANIMALS EXTINCT. A.D. Brown bear circa 500-1000 Reindeer ” 1200 Beaver ” 11-1200 Wolf ” 1680 Wild boar ” 1620 ANIMALS INTRODUCED. Domestic fowl before 55 B.C. Fallow-deer circa ” Pheasant ” ” Domestic ox of Urus type ” 449 A.D. Ass ” 800-850 Cat ” 800-1000 Common rat ” 1727-30 Some or other of these animals are met with in the peat-bogs and alluvia, and in caves, but far more abundantly in the refuse-heaps left behind by man, by whom they have here been used either for service or for food. The disappearance of certain wild species, from the areas in which they lived on the continent, in historic times, has not been ascertained so accurately as in this country, and many animals, which have become extinct in our restricted and highly-cultivated island, are still to be found in the continental forests, morasses, and mountains. The brown bear is still to be met with in the Pyrenees, the Vosges, and in the wilder and more inaccessible portions of northern, middle, and southern Europe. The wolf still survives in France, and during the late German war preyed upon the slain after some of the battles. It, as well as the wild boar, ranges throughout the uncultivated regions of the continent. The beaver still lives in the waters of the Rhone, as well as in the rivers of Lithuania and of Scandinavia, and the reindeer, now restricted to the regions north of a line passing east and west through the Baltic, extended further south, in sufficient numbers to be remarked by Cæsar, among the more noteworthy animals living in the great Hercynian forest, which overshadowed northern Germany in his days. This forest also afforded shelter to the true elk and the bison, both of which still live in Lithuania, as well as to the Urus, which was hunted by Charles the Great, near Aachen, and probably became extinct in the fifteenth or sixteenth century. The lion inhabited the mountains of southern Thrace in the days of Herodotus and of Aristotle, and became extinct in Europe between 330 B.C. and the days of Dio Chrysostom Rhetor (A.D. 100), who expressly says that there were no lions in Greece in his time. The panther also inhabited the same