For there were islands, and are still, in that wide fen, which have escaped the destroying deluge of peat-moss; outcrops of firm land, which even in the Middle Age preserved the Fauna and Flora of the primæval forest, haunted by the descendants of some at least of those wild beasts which roamed on the older continent of the ‘gravel age.’ The all-preserving peat, as well as the monkish records of the early Middle Age, enable us to repeople, tolerably well, the primæval fen. The gigantic ox, _Bos primigenius_, was still there, though there is no record of him in monkish tales. But with him had appeared (not unknown toward the end of the gravel age) another ox, smaller and with shorter horns, _Bos longifrons_; which is held to be the ancestor of our own domestic short-horns, and of the wild cattle still preserved at Chillingham and at Cadzow. The reindeer had disappeared, almost or altogether. The red deer, of a size beside which the largest Scotch stag is puny, and even the great Carpathian stag inferior, abound; so does the roe, so does the goat, which one is accustomed to look on as a mountain animal. In the Woodwardian Museum there is a portion of a skull of an ibex—probably _Capra sibirica_—which was found in the drift gravel at Fulbourne. Wild sheep are unknown. The horse occurs in the peat; but whether wild or tame, who can tell? Horses enough have been mired and drowned since the Romans set foot on this island, to account for the presence of horses’ skulls, without the hypothesis of wild herds, such as doubtless existed in the gravel times. The wolf, of course, is common; wild cat, marten, badger, and otter all would expect; but not so the beaver, which nevertheless is abundant in the peat; and damage enough the busy fellows must have done, cutting trees, damming streams, flooding marshes, and like selfish speculators in all ages, sacrificing freely the public interest to their own. Here and there are found the skulls of bears, in one case that of a polar bear, ice-drifted; and one of a walrus, probably washed in dead after a storm. Beautiful, after their kind, were these fen-isles, in the eyes of the monks who were the first settlers in the wilderness. The author of the History of Ramsey grows enthusiastic, and, after the manner of old monks, somewhat bombastic also, as he describes the lonely isle which got its name from the solitary ram who had wandered thither, either in some extreme drought or over the winter ice, and never able to return, was found, fat beyond the wont of rams, feeding among the wild deer. He tells of the stately ashes—most of them cut in his time, to furnish mighty beams for the church roof; of the rich pastures painted with all gay flowers in spring; of the ‘green crown’ of reed and alder which girdled round the isle; of the fair wide mere with its ‘sandy beach’ along the forest side: ‘a delight,’ he says, ‘to all who look thereon.’