"At the period indicated by these superficial stratified and unstratified deposits the Mastodon had probably disappeared from England, but gigantic elephants (fig. 32), nearly twice the bulk of the largest individuals that now exist in Ceylon and Africa, roamed here in herds, if one may judge from the abundance of their remains. Two horned rhinoceros, of at least two species, forced their way through the ancient forests or wallowed in the swamps. The lakes and rivers were tenanted by hippopotami, as bulky and with as formidable tusks as those of Africa. Three kinds of wild oxen, two of which were of colossal size and strength, and one of them maned and villous like the bonassus, found subsistence on the plains. Deer as gigantic, in proportion to existing species, were the contemporaries of the old _Uri_ and _Bisontes_, and may have disputed with them the pasturage of that ancient land. One of these extinct deer is well known as the Irish elk, by the enormous expanse of its broad-palmed antlers (fig. 33). Another herd proves more like those of the wapiti, but surpassed that great Canadian deer in bulk. A third extinct species more resembled the Indian _Hippelaphus_, and with these were associated the red-deer, the rein-deer, the roebuck, and the goat. A wild horse, a wild ass or quagga, and the wild boar, entered also into the series of British pliocene hoofed animals. The carnivora, organised to enjoy a life of rapine at the expense of the vegetable feeders, to restrain their undue increase and abridge the pangs of the maimed and sickly, were duly adjusted in size and ferocity to the fell task assigned them in the organic economy of the pre-adamite world. Besides a British tiger, of larger size and with proportionately longer paws than that of Bengal, there existed a stronger feline animal (Machairodus) of equal size, which from the great length and sharpness of its sabre-shaped canines, was probably the most ferocious and destructive of its peculiarly carnivorous family. Of the smaller felines, we recognise the remains of a leopard, a large lynx, and of a wild cat. Troops of hyenas, larger than the Crocuta of South Africa, which they most resembled, craunched the bones of the carcases relinquished by the nobler beasts of prey, and doubtless often themselves waged the war of destruction on the feebler quadrupeds. [Illustration: FIG. 33.--IRISH ELK. THE PALEOTHERIUM.] "A savage bear, surpassing the _Ursus ferox_ of the Rocky Mountains, found its hiding-place, like the hyæna, in many of the existing limestone caverns of England. With the _Ursus spoelus_ was associated another bear, more like the common European species, but larger than the present individuals of the _Ursus Arctas_. Wolves and foxes, the badger, the otter, the foumart, and the stoat, complete the category of known pliocene carnivora of Britain."