200 Rev. Mr Lay ton on the Fossil Remains ofHarbrd*. 



to Mr Baker, author of u The Microscope made easy." From 

 that time, till very lately, they have been almost unnoticed. 

 However, four years since, a bed of oysters was discovered a 

 mile from the shore, and the dredgers took up stag and ox 

 horns, and fragments of various large bones. These they de- 

 scribe as having been found in great quantities during the first 

 year, and as thrown away into the deeper water, though they 

 recognized the bones as belonging to the " giants which once 

 inhabited the forest where Harborough sand is now." The 

 origin of this tradition is now clear enough. They have now 

 learned to preserve what they find, and the Norwich Museum 

 and different individuals are in possession of many specimens, 

 brought up from that mine of antediluvian remains. Among 

 them are the jaw and humerus of one of the Saurian tribe ; 

 horns and bones of three kinds of deer, and of the ox, teeth 

 of the horse, a tusk of the hippopotamus ; but especially, nu- 

 merous are the grinders of the elephant, many of them very 

 large, up to twenty laminae, and weighing as many pounds, 

 and in beautiful preservation. Fragments of their tusks also 

 have been found, few, and generally small, owing probably 

 to the dredges having so contracted a mouth. 



There can be no doubt that the land formerly extended over 

 the sea considerably beyond this bed, and I would say be- 

 yond the Harborough sand, and the waves washing away the cliff 

 and dissolving the clay, the softer particles have been carried 

 into the deep, while the denser parts remained. A hard mass 

 of gravel resting on chalk has here resisted the action of the 

 tide, and some fossils rest on its surface, while the others are 

 buried in the sand and silth. How far the land extended it is 

 impossible to judge ; perhaps the twelve miles to the sand are 

 quite enough for the sea to have swept away during the longest 

 time allowed since the deluge of Noah. That the fossils ex- 

 tended much farther, has been lately proved by a tusk found by 

 some men dredging for soles on a bank called the Knole, about 

 twenty miles from the present shore. The accompanying sketch, 

 Plate IV. Fig. 1, 2, gives an idea of its form. Following the 

 outside of the spiral it is nine feet and a half in length. Its great- 

 est circumference is one foot nine inches, and the depth of the 

 hollow two feet. Two lamina? have been lost from the greater 





