120 MUSTELID#. 
sides of the river, as far as the sea-coast. In Littleport- 
fen, below Ely, those marsh lands are of very wide extent, 
and are gradually blended with the great marshes of the 
Bedford level. The turf-bogs are of irregular thickness, 
varying from two or three feet, up to fourteen or fifteen 
feet, and rest either immediately upon the gault, Kimme- 
ridge clay, and Oxford clay, or more rarely upon the thin 
beds of gravel which have been partially drifted over these 
great horizontal argillaceous deposits. In all the fens under 
cultivation the turf-bog is cut through in various places to 
get at the subjacent clay, which is now commonly used as a 
top dressing for the corn-land: in digging for this clay 
blackened bones areoccasionally found immediately under the 
bog, and, therefore, either resting on the marly surface of the 
Kimmeridge and Oxford clays or on the surface of the thin 
layers of drifted and finely comminuted gravel, composed of 
flints from the chalk escarpment, and of pebbles from the 
green sands and oolites. On such a bed, beneath about 
ten feet of peat-bog, the fractured skull and lower jaw, with 
a few other bones, of the Otter, were found associated with 
the antlers of a Roe-buck. 
They presented the same blackened colour and increased 
specific gravity that characterise the bones of the Bear, 
Wolf, Wild Boar, and Beaver, which have been found under 
similar circumstances, and, like these animals, which now no 
longer exist in England, the Otter in question must have 
lived before the fen-lands began to accumulate. 
The jaws which preserve their series of teeth nearly com- 
plete, exhibit the characteristic dentition of the Otter; the 
incisors (fig. 44, 7) are wanting: the canines (/) are shorter 
than those of the Fox, narrower than those of the Badger, 
larger and relatively thicker than those of the Martin-cat, 
and might, therefore, be recognised if found detached; p. 
