n England and Ireland, and, what is more,
between England and Norway, was firm dry land. The country then must
have looked--at least we know it looked so in Norfolk--very like what our
moors look like here. There were forests of Scotch fir, and of spruce
too, which is not wild in England now, though you may see plenty in every
plantation. There were oaks and alders, yews and sloes, just as there
are in our woods now. There was buck-bean in the bogs, as there is in
Larmer's and Heath pond; and white and yellow water-lilies, horn-wort,
and pond-weeds, just as there are now in our ponds. There were wild
horses, wild deer, and wild oxen, those last of an enormous size. There
were little yellow roe-deer, which will not surprise you, for there are
hundreds and thousands in Scotland to this day; and, as you know, they
will thrive well enough in our woods now. There were beavers too: but
that must not surprise you, for there were beavers in South Wales long
after the Norman Conquest, and there are beavers still in the mountain
glens of the south-east of France. There were honest little water-rats
too, who I dare say sat up on their hind legs like monkeys, nibbling the
water-lily pods, thousands of years ago, as they do in our ponds now.
Well, so far we have come to nothing strange: but now begins the fairy
tale. Mixed with all these animals, there wandered about great herds of
elephants and rhinoceroses; not smooth-skinned, mind, but covered with
hair and wool, like those which are still found sticking out of the
everlasting ice cliffs, at the mouth of the Lena and other Siberian
rivers, with the flesh, and skin, and hair so fresh upon them, that the
wild wolves tear it off, and snarl and growl over the carcase of monsters
who were frozen up thousands of years ago. And with them, stranger
still, were great hippopotamuses; who came, perhaps, northward in summer
time along the sea-shore and down the rivers, having spread hither all
the way from Africa; for in those days, you must understand, Sicily, and
Italy, and Malta--look at your map--were joined to the coast of Africa:
and so it may be was the rock of Gibraltar itself; and over the sea where
the Straits of Gibraltar now flow was firm dry land, over which hyaenas
and leopards, elephants and rhinoceroses ranged into Spain; for their
bones are found at this day in the Gibraltar caves. And this is the
first chapter of my fairy tale.

Now while all this was going on, an