containing Mammalian Remains. 545 



accompanied by others which still inhabit the temperate zones, 

 together with the evidence afforded by the Testacea, it is more 

 reasonable to conclude that those species, from a peculiarity 

 of constitution,* were enabled to endure a climate not widely 

 differing from the present, than to infer that these latitudes 

 formerly possessed a higher temperature. 



It may not be irrelevant to remark, that in these deposits 

 we find scarcely any trace of vegetable remains 5 and yet it is 

 clear that vegetation was profusely abundant, if we reflect 

 that the Carnivora must have been supported by numerous 

 liuminantia, which, from the uninjured state of their remains, 

 there is every reason to conclude pastured in the valleys where 

 they and their destroyers now lie entombed. 



Professor Philips, in his ' Treatise on Geology,' p. 298, has 

 the following passage. — " From the occurrence of the bones 

 of land Mammalia among some of the diluvial gravel and 

 clays, that the track of the watery currents was, in places at 

 least, over the solid land ; though it seems not necessary to 

 imagine that the ossiferous accumulations in question, (Brands- 

 burton gravel hills, Overton near York, Harwich, Ilford in 

 Essex, Brentford, &c), were heaped upon the land. They 

 might be finally aggregated in the sea ; and thus the seem- 

 ingly contradictory evidence of marine shells and quadruped- 

 al bones, in the same set of deposits, be reconciled." Now 

 in the. two last localities the bones are associated with fresh- 

 water shells, and I have mentioned this error from a convic- 

 tion that these remains are more constant and abundant in 

 ancient fluviatile and lacustrine than in marine or diluvial ac- 

 cumulations, though it cannot be doubted that marine depo- 

 sits co-existed. 



The general occurrence of these fluviatile alluviums along 

 the courses and margins of our present rivers, would lead us 

 to infer that not much alteration has been effected in the phy- 

 sical features of the country since their deposition, although 

 subsequently denuded and modified by existing streams ; for 

 at Erith they occur about 40 feet above the Thames, and at 

 Maidstone more than 60 feet above the Medway. 



•"Numerous circumstances, quite independent of osseous structure, 

 might have caused animals of the same species to inhabit widely different 

 climates : we must therefore proceed with the greatest caution, in speaking 

 of the peculiarities of species which formerly existed, when we have no 

 other circumstances to guide us than the mere structure of the skeleton." 

 'On the Wisdom and Goodness of God as displayed in the Animal Crea- 

 tion,' by C. M. Burnett, 1838. See also remarks by Dr. Fleming on ani- 

 mals of a near resemblance in form and structure, not having a similar ge- 

 ographical distribution. « Edinb. New Phil. Journ.' 1829, No. 12, p. 282 : 

 and Lyell, 'Geol.' vol. i. p. 146. 



