Page:VCH Suffolk 1.djvu/72

 A HISTORY OF SUFFOLK size; but a third Crag humerus from Foxhall, also in the collection of Major Moor, as well as a fourth specimen of the same bone from the Crag, preserved in the York Museum, indicate a still smaller species, which has been provisionally identified with one described on the evidence of remains from the Antwerp Crag under the name of Phocanella minor. Whether this seal really belongs to an extinct generic type may perhaps be open to doubt. Passing on to the hoofed or ungulate mammals, it may be men- tioned in the first place that teeth and limb bones from the Red Crag of Boyton and other localities in the county undoubtedly demonstrate the occurrence in that deposit of a member of the ox tribe. It has been suggested that the species in question is the Pleistocene bison, but it is perhaps more likely that it is identical with the extinct Etruscan ox {Bos etruscus) of the Pliocene deposits of the Val d'Arno, a primitive species of which the cows were hornless. Cheek-teeth of more than one form of large ruminant are known from the Red Crag nodule bed of Boyton, Sutton, Woodbridge and elsewhere which not improbably belonged to antelopes of several kinds. Two bones of the foot of a small ruminant in the Museum of Practical Geology, said to be from the Coralline Crag of Gedgrave, present a considerable resemblance to the corresponding elements of the skeleton of the musk-deer [Moschus moschiferus). Antlers and teeth of deer are exceedingly common in the Suffolk Crags, and a large number of so-called species have been based on remains of the former description. Although the number of these nominal species is undoubtedly too large, their reduction is a matter of extreme difficulty, and since it is impossible in some instances to be certain even of the generic position of these Crags, they are but very briefly noticed in this place. Certain fragments of antlers in the British Museum from the nodule bed of the Red Crag have been identified with a fallow deer first described from the Norwich Crag under the name of Cervus falconeri, but the right of the type of the latter to specific distinc- tion is more or less doubtful. The beam of a large antler from the Red Crag of Suffolk was referred by Sir R. Owen' in 1856 to the giant fallow deer or 'Irish elk,' now known scientifically as Cervus giganteus; although, as pointed out by Mr. Newton,^ it is most likely that this specimen does not belong to the typical form of that species, it is quite probable that it may pertain to one of the older races of the same, such as the so-called C. "verticorms of the Forest Bed of both Norfolk and Suffolk. Of quite a different character are the antlers from the Red Crag nodule bed of Sutton and other localities in the county, on the evidence of which the species C. suttonensis was based by Professor Boyd Dawkins' in 1878. This species was probably allied to the Oriental rusine deer. Tusks, incisors and cheek-teeth of swine are now and again met with in the nodule bed of the Red Crag of Suffolk, the York Museum ^ ^art. Journ. Geol. Soc. xxxvi. 441. 36
 * Stuart. Journ. Geol. Soc. xii. 226. ' ' Vercebrata of Pliocene Deposits,' p. 29.