The deer of the forest-bed, in this list, do not represent approximately the number of species: there are at least five, and perhaps six, represented by a series of antlers, which I do not venture to quote, because I have not been able to compare them with those of the pleiocenes of the Val d’Arno, of Marseilles, or of Auvergne.
Dr. Falconer pointed out that one of the peculiar characters of the fauna of the forest-bed is the presence of the mammoth; and the evidence on which he considered the animal to be of preglacial age in Europe has been fully verified by the molars from Bacton, which are now in the Manchester Museum. They are associated with Elephas meridionalis and E. antiquus, and are incrusted with precisely the same matrix as the teeth and bones of those species.
No caves have been discovered containing this peculiar assemblage of fossil animals.
The Pleiocene Mammalia.
The relation of the pleistocene to the pleiocene fauna is a question of very great difficulty, because the latter has not yet been satisfactorily defined, although Prof. Gervais and Dr. Falconer have given the more important species from Auvergne, Montpellier, and the Val d’Arno. The following list is taken from Prof. Gervais’s great work “Zoologie et Paléontologie Françaises,” p. 349, the term pseudo-pleiocene merely implying that the fauna differs from that of the marine deposit of Montpellier, which he takes as his standard.
Pseudo-pleiocene of Issoire.
Hystrix refossa.
Castor issiodorensis.
Arctomys antiqua.
Arvicola robustus.
Cervus pardinensis.
C. arvernensis.
C. causanus.
Sus arvernensis.
Lepus Lacosti.
Mastodon arvernensis.
Tapirus arvernensis.
Rhinoceros elatus?
Bos elatus.
Cervus polycladus.
C. ardens.
C. cladocerus.
C. issiodorensis.
C. Perrieri.
C. etueriarum.
Ursus arvernensis.
Canis borbonidus.
Felis pardinensis.
F. arvernensis.
F. brevirostris.
F. issiodorensis.
Machairodus cultridens.
Hyæna arvernensis.
H. Perrieri.
Lutra Bravardi.
To these animals Dr. Falconer[269] adds Hippopotamus major, Elephas antiquus, and Rhinoceros megarhinus, and he identifies Rhinoceros elatus with his new species Rhinoceros etruscus. Prof. Gaudry agrees with me in the belief that Hyæna Perrieri is identical with H. striata or the striped species.
Prof. Gervais also identifies the Equus robustus of M. Pomel, from the same locality, with the common Horse, Equus fossilis.
The fauna of Montpellier is certainly very different from that of Issoire; but since it is neither meiocene nor pleistocene, it must belong to one of the intermediate stages of the pleiocene. It includes