THE LIBRARY TABLE. 243 



In the chapters on "The Evolution of Live-stock" some curious facts 

 about sheep are mentioned. At a place in Derbyshire a "fault" separated a 

 limestone area from one in which silicious grit formed the surface, The 

 sheep were all of one breed. But while those which fed on the lime-stone 

 were healthier and made better mutton, those which fed on the sandstone had 

 superior wool. Bakewell, it appears, classed wool soils thus : — Clay, the 

 best ; sand next ; lastly lime But we are also reminded of " the effect of clay 

 formations — as the Oxford Clay — in developing such diseases as liver-fluke 

 and foot-rot." 



It seems to me, however, worth suggesting that possibly much of the ill- 

 health of sheep on clay may be due to bad water supply. 



But it is impossible, in the space available in the Essex Naturalist, to 

 discuss adequately a book which covers so large a field as this, and is the 

 result of so many years' hard work, both in the library and on the farm. It is 

 a pleasure to be able to congratulate the author on the success of his labours, 

 and to recommend his book to all who are interested in Agricultural Geology. 



T. V. H. 



The Giant Beaver (Trogontherium) in the Thames Valley. — In the 

 Geological Magazine for September (1902) there is a short paper by Mr. E. 

 T. Newton, F.R.S., F.G.S., on " The Giant Beaver (Tyogontheyium) from the 

 Thames Valley." Mr. Newton remarks that English specimens of 

 Tyogontheyium have been chiefly obtained from the ' Cromer Forest Bed,' 

 " that rich and remarkable series of beds occupying a position in time, 

 between the Crags and the Glacial deposits of East Anglia." A few 

 specimens have, however, been found in the Norwich and Weybourn Crags, 

 Now a lower incisor tooth of Tyogontheyium cuvieyi has been met with in a bed 

 of gravel (at 78 feet O.D.) an old Thames Valley deposit, near Greenhithe, 

 Kent, together with remains of Elephas antiqmts. E, pyimigenius, Rhinoceyos^ 

 kptoyhintis. Bos primiqenius, etc., and many Palaeolithic implements. The 

 implements have been figured and described by Mr W. M. Newton in Man 

 for June, 1901.— T. V. H. 



The Matrix of the Suffolk Chalky Boulder-clay.- A paper on this 

 subject, by the Rev. Edwin Hill, M.A., F.G.S., appears in the Quayteyly 

 Jouynal, Geological Sac. (vol. Ixviii., pp. 179-182. It need hardly be remarked 

 that the Suffolk Boulder Clay is also that of Norfolk and Essex, though it 

 covers a larger proportion of Suffolk than of the counties due north and south. 

 Indeed, some of the specimens examined were from the neighbourhood of 

 Bishop Stortford, and one from Finchley in Middlesex, others came from 

 Boston, Lincolnshire, though most were from Suffolk. Mr. Hill remarks that 

 the materials of the matrix do not appear to have come from the east, but 

 from the west or north-west, and that they were drawn from a limited belt 

 lying on one side of the basin which the Boulder Clay occupies. — T. V. H. 



