FOSSIL JAW OF MAMMOTH. 349 



bourhood, — the Rev. James Layton, — speaks of having had 

 three hundred in his possession. x 



It would be a matter of great interest to determine the ex- 

 tent of the sub-aqueous area over which these fossil remains 

 are distributed ; but conclusions upon this point must be in 

 a great measure merely conjectural, as the necessary evidence 

 can only be obtained where the soundings are sufficiently shal- 

 low to admit of dredging being carried forward. Until the find- 

 ing of this jaw off the Dogger Bank, which is somewhere about 

 midway between the English and Dutch coasts, the greatest 

 distance from the shore where fossil remains had been met with 

 was the Knole Sand. At this spot, which is about twenty 

 miles from the coast, a tusk, weighing ninety-seven pounds, 

 and measuring nearly ten feet in length, was discovered in 1829. 



As in the case with the fossil volutes cast on shore near Har- 

 wich, the remains of extinct mammals drawn up in the nets 

 of the oyster-dredgers, and which have perhaps reposed for 

 thousands of centuries on the bed of the ocean, are in a much 

 finer state of preservation than those which, in the present 

 day, are so constantly being exhumed in our inland superfi- 

 cial deposits. The mammoth's teeth, instead of falling to 

 pieces as they so frequently do when removed from the soil 

 in which they are imbedded, in the former case will often bear 

 slitting and polishing in the same manner as the teeth of the 

 existing Asiatic elephant. A tusk, taken up off Scarborough 

 about three years since, by some Yarmouth fishermen, was 

 so slightly altered in character, that it was sawn up into as 

 many portions as there were hands in the boat, each man 

 claiming his share of the ivory for economical purposes. 2 In 

 the present specimen, although the teeth are extremely per- 

 fect, their condition has more about it than usual of the ordi- 

 nary character of fossil teeth ; but the firm aspect, and the 

 increased density and compact structure of the bony material 

 of the jaw, would at once arrest the attention of an observer, 

 familiarised only with such osseous remains as are procured 

 under ordinary circumstances. 



We cannot suppose this jaw to have been drifted far from 

 the original site of its deposition, for although the condyloid 

 apophyses are gone, if so ponderous a body had been acted 

 upon by the operation of currents, a separation of the rami at 

 the symphysis must have taken place. The detached grind- 

 ers obtained in a similar way are seldom bouldered, and it is 



1 See Fairholme's Geology of Scripture. Mr. Layton has subsequently 

 removed to Sandwich. 



2 The portion of this tusk which fell to one of the boat's crew is preserved 

 in the collection of Mr. Robt. Fitch, at Norwich. 



