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Thorpe), has suggested the subject of this paper. Want of proper 

 care when it was at first unearthed from the alluvium of the Med- 

 way, near Aylesford, has reduced the specimen to a collection of 

 mere fragments. The circumference of the larger piece being twelve 

 inches it is probable, by comparison with entire specimens, that 

 the length (measured round the inside curve) was about seven feet. 

 It is not the rarity of such a specimen that is most remarkable, 

 but rather the vast number of extinct elephants that such lemains 

 represent. Mr. Boyd Dawkins, in the Geological Magazine, for 

 1867, page 101, gives the following species of mammalia as 

 having been found in the Thames valley : 2 of Lion, 1 of Hyena, 

 2 of Boar, 2 of Ox, 3 of Deer, 1 of Horse, 1 of Beaver, 3 of 

 Rhinoceros, 1 of Hippopotamus, and 3 of Elephant, viz. : — 

 E. antiquus, E. primigenius, and E. priscus. It is, however, the 

 Elephas primigenius or the mammoth, of which the remains are 

 most numerous, and which was the representative in northern 

 Europe towards the close of what is called geological time, of the 

 elephants of the present day. It is remarkable that the word 

 mammoth is not of classical origin but of Siberian, some having 

 been found in the frozen gravels of Siberia in so perfect a con- 

 dition that the inhabitants supposed them to be gigantic moles 

 that had burrowed underground, and named them accordingly. 

 We are apt to look upon fossil remains as verj' dry bones, but 

 some of these have been found with the flesh on the bones 

 covered with dark grey bristles from 1 to 18 inches in length and 

 an underclothing of red wool curled in locks ; in one of the 

 specimens the eye was perfect ; the flesh was in an eatable con- 

 dition, for the dogs fed upon it, and a portion was made into soup 

 of which (I remember Dean Alford saying, now about twenty 

 years ago) some naturalists either partook or pretended to par- 

 take. This was an anticipation of the mode recently adopted 

 for bringing over supplies of meat from Australia and South 

 America preserved by ice, or rather at a low temperature, a few 

 degrees above freezing being found most favourable. The 

 famous skeleton in the Museum at St. Petersburg measures 16 feet 

 in length and 9 feet 4 inches in height, so that it does not appear 

 that these extinct elephants were bigger than those of the present 

 day. Woodward states two thousand grinders were dredged up 

 off the Norfolk coast in thirteen years ; they are found in such 

 quantities on the sea bottom off Dunkirk that the sailors call it 

 the bur}'ing ground. Mr. Leith Adams states that he has recog- 

 nized five hundred individuals in public and private museums in 

 the country. 



In our own immediate neighbourhood we are indebted to 

 Mrs. Dean, of St. Mildred's, for collecting and preserving four 

 molar teeth and a tusk, with other bones, found in the gravel 

 pits on Mr. Dean's property in St. Mildred's. And also to Mr. 

 Sheppard for preserving a tusk found in the drainage excavations 



