Page:Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, vol. 28.djvu/562

466 those of the ox and sheep, or, at any rate, to have been subjected to different conditions as regards exposure &c.

4. Incerta.—The other remains from this level are eighteen or twenty broken and rolled fragments of long and flat bones of some large animal or animals, not improbably Elephant, Rhinoceros, or Hippopotamus. Most of them are too imperfect to allow of correct determination; and all are extremely friable, loaded with manganous oxide, and apparently retain very little animal matter, since they neither blacken nor smell when burnt. As they are, as above said, much rolled, it may be presumed that they may have formed part of a previous deposit. But amongst these remains is a large portion of an elephant's molar, which will be referred to subsequently.

The remains from the Mid-terrace Gravel, with one or two exceptions, all present characters of great antiquity. They are all highly dendritic, and adhere strongly to the tongue. They vary, however, a good deal in colour, many being white and chalky, except where stained with manganous oxide, whilst others are highly ferruginous. They present no evidence of their having been water-worn or rolled; and from the circumstance that several portions of the same skeleton have occurred at no great distance apart, it would seem probable that the carcasses of the animals had been deposited more or less entire not very far from the locality in which the bones were found, viz. a bight of the ancient river.

The bones of decidedly recent origin (five or six in number) belong to the Horse (of which a nearly entire skeleton was found in one of the pits) and Ox, the latter species being represented by the proximal end of a humerus, whose shaft has been chopped across; most probably an old marrow-bone.

The really fossil bones belong to the following species:—

1. Rhinoceros hemitœchus.—The only distinguishable relic of Rhinoceros is a nearly entire left ulna, whose form and dimensions agree precisely with those of Rhinoceros hemitœchus from the Ilford gravel, of