Page:Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, vol. 26.djvu/739

1870.] generally 10 feet, and sometimes 15 or 16 feet, and in a pit near Southsea at least 27 feet thick, extending to below the sea-level.

(d) No organic remains have hitherto been found in the gravel covering the plains. Mr. Trimmer, who carefully examined the New Forest and the neighbouring country, observes that he found neither shells nor mammalian bones, nor could he hear of any having been found in the gravel. Mr. Wise, in a recent work on the New Forest, notices the same absence of mammalian remains. He records the finding of the os innominatum of probably Bos longifrons; but the locality was Shepherd's Gutter, near Bramshaw, on low ground, and in gravel perfectly distinct from that covering the plains. In the valley-gravels mammalian bones &c. have been found. The rich collections made from the gravels of the Avon and Wily, near Salisbury, are well known. At Fordingbridge, ten miles below Salisbury, on the Avon, the teeth of Elephas primigenius have been found in gravel about 40 feet above the river, in which also were imbedded several flint implements now in the Blackmore Museum at Salisbury.

In gravels of the Stour valley near Blandford, 50 feet above the river, elephant- and horse-bones and teeth were found in some abundance.

At Dewlish, situated on a tributary of the Trent or Piddle, which flows into Poole Harbour, the bones, molars, and tusks of Elephas meridionalis were found in 1813 in a pit on the side of a chalk hill 100 feet above the base. A molar is preserved in the Blackmore Museum, in the guide to which Mr. E. T. Stevens quotes the notice of the discovery given in the 'Monthly Magazine' for May 1814.

At Swathling, near Southampton, in the valley of the Itchen, a molar of Elephas primigenius was discovered a few years since in gravel about 10 feet above the river, and is preserved at the Fleming Arms Inn.

Flint implements have been found in the tabular bed of gravel capping the cliffs near Bournemouth at 120 feet above the sea-level; of these, one or two were found in situ by Dr. Blackmore. In the Christy collection is a cast of a large oval implement from near Lymington; and recently two specimens have been obtained from gravel-pits on Southampton Common at 86 and 150 feet above the sea-level. From the gravel cliff between Southampton Water and Gosport numerous specimens have been obtained. With one exception these were picked up on the beach, on which they evidently had been rolled; but the sharp angles appear to have been smoothly rounded off before the rougher rolling on the modern beach took place. With few exceptions they have the whitish coating and porcelain-like lustre of the flints in the white gravel already described; and as the white coating has been removed at the angles by the