the chase. Otters pursued the salmon and trout in the rivers, beavers constructed their wonderful dams, and water rats haunted the banks of the streams." Mr. Windle adds the remark that while many of the animals just mentioned are no longer to be found in England, only one, the Irish elk, has become absolutely extinct.
With the Bronze Period, synchronous with Celtic immigration, of which a later band—the Brythons—have been located in the fourth century b.c, we come to historic facts, and Pytheas, who then visited the country, has given his impressions. It was probably then, as our author describes it, covered with vast forests and marshes, "overhung with constant fogs and deluged with frequent rains." Pytheas was probably the first to mention the British beer, known by a Celtic term curmi, now cuirm in Irish, and cwrw in Welsh, and which the Greek physicians warned their patients against, as "producing pain in the head and injury to the nerves."
We cannot further pursue a subject which not only appertains to Anthropology, but also to the general zoologist, altogether relating to our British fauna, and affording many side lights to the actual status of our animal life of to-day, man included. The size of the book, some 230 pages only, of course denotes that it is suggestive to further reading elsewhere, and a very fair and useful bibliography is given as an appendix. (The name Dr. Beddoes, as written throughout, might with advantage be deprived of its ultimate consonant). Another useful appendix is a County List, giving localities where many primitive remains may be observed.
Though animals and their habits are of course best studied under natural conditions, there are very many living creatures which can only be observed in captivity by naturalists. Certainly many of the reptiles included in this comprehensive volume—Crocodiles and Pythons, for example—are not usual out-door studies,
