Could we have visited the world in this dreary period, and have witnessed the decadence and death of that brilliant and magnificent flora and fauna which we have traced upward from the Eocene, we might well have despaired of the earth's destinies, and have fancied it the sport of some malignant demon; or have supposed that in the contest between the powers of destruction and those of renovation the former had finally gained the victory. We must observe, however, that the suffering in such a process is less then we might suppose. So long as animals could exist, they would continue to enjoy life. The conditions unfavourable to them would be equally or more so to their natural enemies. Only the last survivors would meet with what might be regarded as a tragical end. As one description of animal became extinct, another was prepared to occupy its room. If elephants and rhinoceroses perished from the land, countless herds of walruses and seals took their places. If gay insects died and disappeared, shell-fishes and sea-stars were their successors. Thus in nature there is life even in death, and constant enjoyment even when old systems are passing away. But could we have survived the Glacial period, we should have seen a reason for its apparently wholesale destruction. Out of that chaos came at length an Eden; and just as the Permian prepared the way for the Mesozoic, so the glaciers and icebergs of the Post-pliocene were the ploughshare of God preparing the earth for the time when, with a flora and fauna more beautiful and useful, if less magnificent then that of the Tertiary, it became as the garden of the Lord, fitted for the reception of His image and likeness, immortal and intelligent Man. We need not, however, with one modern school of philosophy, regard man himself as but a descendant of Miocene apes, scourged into reason and humanity by the struggle for existence in the Glacial period. We may be content to consider him as a son of God, and to study in the succeeding chapters that renewal of the Post-pliocene world which preceded and heralded his advent. In the meantime, our illustration,[AK] borrowed in part from the magnificent representation of the Post-pliocene fauna of England, by the great restorer of extinct animals, Mr. Waterhouse Hawkins, may serve to give some idea of the grand and massive forms of animal life which, even in the higher latitudes, survived the Post-pliocene cold, and only decayed and disappeared under that amelioration of physical conditions which marks the introduction of the human period. [AK] Page 301. CHAPTER XII. CLOSE OF THE POST-PLIOCENE, AND ADVENT OF MAN.