162 On the Crag Beds of Suffolk and Essex. 



Note on the Crag Beds of Suffolk and Essex. (See Mag. 

 Nat. Hist. vol. ii. N. s. p. 42). — In the list of crag beds "in 

 which no traces of terrestrial Mammalia have yet been ob- 

 served," as stated by you in the paper republished in the Ja- 

 nuary number, from the sixth Report of the British Associa- 

 tion, I observe you have enumerated the red crag beds of 

 Walton, Essex, and Felixstow, Suffolk, and the coralline crag 

 of Tattingstone, and I am sure you will pardon me for draw- 

 ing your attention to the fact, that bones of Mammalia have 

 been found in all those beds. I remember having seen enor- 

 mous thigh bones, when a boy, which were found by Mr. 

 Barnard, of Walton, and sent by him to East Bergholt, where 

 they were exhibited in the shop of his brother, the late Mr. 

 Benjamin Barnard, and many persons now living at Bergholt 

 may probably remember having seen them there. I have my- 

 self found mammalian remains at Tattingstone, and several 

 large bones were found in Mr. Cowper's pits, in Tattingstone 

 park, in 1827 or 1828. My authority for the remains at Fe- 

 lixstow is 'The Beauties of England and Wales,' which says 

 that " Roger Petti wood, of Felixstow, Esq. had a petrified 

 elephant's tooth, from the cliffs of Felixstow." Lambard al- 

 so says, in his Dictionary, that "in Queen Elizabeth's time, 

 bones were found at Walton, (Suffolk?), of a man whose skull 

 would contain five pecks, and one of his teeth, as big as a 

 man's fist, and weighed 10 oz." "These bones," he says, "had 

 sometimes bodies, not of beasts, but of men, for the difference 

 is manifest." Rude as this information is, I think it clear as 

 to the fact of mammalian remains. — W. B. Clarke. — Stanley 

 Green, Poole, Feb. %th, 1838. 



[Our valued correspondent appears, by the above communication, to take 

 it for granted that bones of the elephant, shewn to him as the production of 

 the Walton and Felixstow cliffs, must, as such, have been taken out of the 

 crag. Now elephants' teeth have been found in abundance in the Brighton 

 cliffs ; in still greater numbers at Heme Bay ; and occasionally in the Isle 

 of Sheppy ; yet, surely, Mr. Clarke would not consider himself warranted 

 in concluding from this circumstance, that terrestrial Mammalia occur in 

 the chalk and London clay. We are not aware of any circumstances, con- 

 nected with the history of the fossil Mammalia in Suffolk and Essex, which 

 would lead us to suppose that their geological relations differs widely from 

 such as usually accompany similar remains in other parts of England ; 

 and certainly, in the absence of direct proof, we should not be disposed to 

 refer the bones of the elephant to a marine tertiary formation, of the same 

 age as the beds of crag alluded to by Mr. Clarke, if brought from a district 

 in which more recent deposits were present. 



The bones of pachydermatous animals, along with those of ruminants, 

 &c. only occur at Walton and Felixstow, in common with a hundred other 

 localities along the line of coast, from Brighton to Scarborough, the 

 cliffs of which may present us with a section of crag, London clay, chalk, 

 or any thing else ; we find in the neighbourhood of each, an equal a- 



