Researches in the high terraces above the Thames and
the Ouse, as well as at other points in Great Britain, placed
beyond a doubt the fact that man existed on the British Islands
at a time when they were connected by solid land with the
Continent, and made it clear that, within the period of the
existence of man in northern Europe, a large portion of the
British Islands had been sunk to depths between fifteen hundred
and twenty-five hundred feet beneath the Northern Ocean,--had
risen again from the water,--had formed part of the continent of
Europe, and had been in unbroken connection with Africa, so that
elephants, bears, tigers, lions, the rhinoceros and
hippopotamus, of species now mainly extinct, had left their
bones in the same deposits with human implements as far north as
Yorkshire. Moreover, connected with this fact came in the new
conviction, forced upon geologists by the more careful
examination of the earth and its changes, that such elevations
and depressions of Great Britain and other parts of the world
were not necessarily the results of sudden cataclysms, but
generally of slow processes extending through vast cycles of
years--processes such as are now known to be going on in various
parts of the world.
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