"Phenomena like these," says Professor Sedgwick, when referring to the discoveries at the North Cliff, Yorkshire, in 1829, "have a tenfold interest, binding the present order of things to that of older periods, in which the existing forms of animated nature seem one after another to disappear."[29] Thus much is apparent from the most superficial glance at the geological evidence of the primeval state of Britain within the historic era, that though corresponding in its great geographical outlines to its present condition, it differed, in nearly every other respect, as widely as it is possible for us to conceive of a country capable of human occupation. A continuous range of enormous forests covered nearly the whole face of the country. Vast herds of wild cattle, of gigantic proportions and fierce aspect, roamed through the chase, while its thickets and caves were occupied by carnivora, preying on the herbivorous animals, and little likely to hold in dread the armed savage who intruded on their lair. The whole of these have existed since the formation of the peat began, and therefore furnish some evidence of the very remote antiquity to which we must refer the origin of some of the wastes that supply, as will be seen in subsequent chapters, an important element in the elucidation of primitive chronology. Upon this singular arena Archæology informs us that the primeval Briton entered, unprovided with any of those appliances with which the arts of civilisation arm man against such obstacles. Intellectually, he appears to have been in nearly the lowest stage to which an intelligent being can sink; morally, he was the slave of a superstition, the grovelling character of which will be traced in reviewing his sepulchral rites; physically, he differed little in stature from the modern inheritors of the same soil, but his cerebral development was poor, his head small in proportion to his body, his hands, and probably his feet, also small; while the weapons with which he provided himself for the chase, and the few implements that ministered to his limited necessities, indicate only the crude development of that inventive ingenuity which first distinguishes the reason of man from the instincts of the brutes. The evidence from which such conclusions are deduced, forms the subject of the following chapters. FOOTNOTES: [20] Owen's British Fossil Mammals, p. 179. [21] Owen's British Fossil Mammals, p. 462. [22] Ibid. Introd. p. xxxiii. [23] British Association for Advancement of Science, Report for 1847, p. 31; and Owen, Introd. p. xxxiii. [24] Owen's British Fossil Mammals, p. 107. An interesting account of the discovery of antiquities of human remains in Kent's Hole, one of the most remarkable British ossiferous caves, is given in a subsequent chapter from the narrative of the Rev. J. M'Enery, F.G.S. [25] Ibid. p. 197. [26] History of British Animals, p. 24. [27] British Fossil Mammals, p. 500. [28] British Fossil Mammals, p. 162.