Page:VCH Cornwall 1.djvu/95

 PALAEONTOLOGY VERTEBRATE remains are very scarce in Cornwall, this being no doubt due to the nature of the rocks of the county. Among mammals remains of the red deer (Census elaphus] are recorded from the superficial deposits of St. Columb, and those of the reindeer (Rangifer tarandus], the wild horse (Equus cabal/us fossitis), the mammoth (Elephas primigenius), and the great cave-lion (Fells /eospe/aea), from Otterham. Of far greater interest than any of the foregoing are, however, certain bones of a whalebone whale from a superficial formation at Petuan in the parish of St. Austell, which are preserved in the museum at Penzance and have been described by the late Sir William Flower in the Annals and Magazine of Natural History for 1872 (ser. 4, vol. ix, p. 440), and in the Transactions of the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall for 1 875 (vol. ix, p. 117) under the name of Eschrichtius robustus. They were dug up some time prior to the year 1829, at a distance of about half a mile from the shore at a depth of some twenty feet below the surface in a bed of river- silt and gravel. By Sir William Flower they were identified with a species previously known by a subfossil skeleton from the Swedish Island of Graso in the Baltic, which had been named Balaenoptera robusta by Professor Lilljeborg,but which Dr. J. E. Gray made thetypeof the genus Eschrichtius. That skeleton was found in a deposit of partly clay and partly sand at a depth of between two and four feet below the surface, and from ten to fifteen feet above the present level, and at a distance of over 800 ft. from the shore. That these two skeletons indicate a whale generically distinct from any now inhabiting the Atlantic and adjacent seas is quite certain ; and the only question is whether the Pacific grey whale, described subsequently as Rhachianectes g/aucus, is not the same. It is scarcely likely that a species which lived at such a comparatively recent epoch as the one indicated by the deposits in which the two skeletons were found should have become totally extinct. Between the foregoing scanty list of mammals from formations of Pleistocene or later age, no vertebrate (or perhaps we should rather say chordate) remains appear to be known from the county till we reach the Lower Devonian, from which formation at Polperro, Fowey, and Lani- vet Bay have been obtained numerous specimens of the bony shields of armoured fish-like creatures constituting the Palaeozoic family Pteraspididae. Originally these interesting fossils were described by the late Sir F. M'Coy * as sponges, and named Steganodictyum cornubicum; but their fish-like nature 1 Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist. (2) viii, 481 (1851). 47