There are in Professor Cole's views many points with which I readily agree. In the first place, he acknowledges that migration has taken place on land, so that we have our land-connection between Great Britain and the Continent whatever theory we accept as to the direction taken by the migrants. That the western borderland of Europe has given rise to many important assemblages of animals in past times, seems to me also exceedingly probable, nor do I look upon the British Islands as "barren lands waiting to be peopled in pliocene or later times." On the contrary, I believe an almost uninterrupted stream of migrants poured into the British Isles before pliocene times from the south. But what I thoroughly disagree with, is the remark that our British land-fauna has been sent to the new steppes that opened eastward. These are the more or less arid portions of Eastern Europe. Professor Cole no doubt has in mind those species of mammals which I have included in what I called the Siberian migration, and of which we have fossil evidence in the late Tertiary deposits of Europe. It would be impossible here to discuss this subject fully, especially as I have done so in the subsequent chapters; but, even if we had no geological record whatsoever, the present range of the species in question and their nearest relatives must convince us that they could not have originated in Western Europe. However, on the strength of the geological evidence, Professor Nehring--the only one who has made this fauna his special study--remarks (p. 228), that there seems scarcely any doubt that this steppe-fauna just referred to had come to us from the east. Professors Boyd Dawkins, Brandt, and Lartet held similar views.
The theory that an ice-sheet stretched across a narrow sea might be the means of aiding a fauna across from the mainland to an island, is particularly inapplicable to the British Islands. Neither Mr. Kinahan nor Mr. Lamplugh, the two supporters of this view, have, however, taken the trouble to apply it to more than one species of the British fauna. An ice-bridge, thinks Mr. Kinahan, "could easily have connected Scotland and Ireland, thus giving a land causeway for migration" (p. 3). Mr. Lamplugh throws more light on this interesting speculation by giving us the name of an animal which he believes crossed a narrow sea on a bridge of ice. This animal unfortunately happens to be one whose remains have never been found in high northern latitudes, viz., the Irish elk (_Cervus giganteus_). And because he is of opinion that this species of extinct deer found its way to the Isle of Man from the mainland on a waning ice-sheet, he sees no reason why certain elements of the Irish fauna should not have been similarly introduced.