Throughout this work we are made acquainted with facts which bear out the view that the climate during the greater part of the Glacial period was mild rather than intensely arctic in Europe. That a huge ice-sheet could have covered Northern Europe under such conditions appears to me very doubtful. No one can deny, however, that glaciers must have existed during the Glacial period in all the mountainous regions of Central and Northern Europe, though their existence is not incompatible with a mild climate. Tree-ferns and other tropical vegetation grow at the foot of glaciers in New Zealand. We need not even go so far afield, for in Switzerland grapes ripen and an abundant fauna and flora thrive in close proximity to some of the well-known glaciers. One matter of importance still remains to be considered before concluding this chapter, viz., the fauna contained in the English geological deposit known as the "Forest-Bed." This interesting deposit is exposed at the base of a range of cliffs on the coast of Norfolk. It is composed of beds of estuarine and marine origin. The tree-stumps formerly believed to be the remains of trees _in situ_ have, after more careful examination, proved to be in all cases drifted specimens. A portion of the "Forest-Bed" no doubt was laid down in close proximity to a large river, and subject to being periodically flooded by it. It is not absolutely certain, therefore, that all the mammals whose remains occur in this deposit lived in England or whether only on the banks of the river farther south. Nevertheless, we may take for granted that some of them did. England was at the time connected with France and Belgium, and for our purpose it matters little whether they had crossed the Channel or inhabited those parts of the Continent through which the great river flowed which sent its alluvial detritus as far as the plains of Norfolk. All we have to remember is that certain mammals, which appear to have originated in Siberia, and of which we have some evidence that they crossed Central Europe in their westward course, had now reached the great river just alluded to, which some geologists believe to have been the Rhine.