48 



the specimen, auJ applying it to a slieet of white paper, 

 made a clear black stripe down it, thus showing that the 

 ink retained all its specific qualities after a lapse of in- 

 numerable ages. Above this fish bed, in the upper Lias lay the 

 ammonites. The Society adjourned shortly afterwards to 

 inspect on the spot some of the geological strata Mr. Moore 

 had been describing. Recent researches in the neighbour- 

 hood of Taunton, and at SandfordHill and Wokey Hole had 

 revealed vast stores of osseous remains of extinct animals 

 as in Kent's Hole, the Dardogne cave, and other localities 

 in this country and in Europe. The species exhibited were 

 the elephas primogenius, bison priscus, rhinoceros 

 tichorrhinus, ursa spelcea, felis speloea, the hippopotamus, 

 &c. Ail these animals had once been inhabitants of our 

 latitudes ; and this department of geology is particularly 

 interesting from the fact that in juxta-position with these 

 bones and the bones of the mammoth, have been found 

 flints, worked artificially by some unknown being, endowed 

 with reason, and made into weapons of war, and imple- 

 ments of the chase, or for domestic use. These implements 

 Lave been found in our own neighbourhood, in the drift 

 deposits near Eeculver, and in juxta-position with the 

 bones and tusks of extinct, or what we were once accus- 

 tomed to call, antediluvian animals. At the evening meet- 

 ing at Ilminster, Mr. Sandford gave a most interesting 

 lecture on the comparative anatomy of the animals of the 

 Taunton cave deposits, especially the species Felis, and 

 contrasted in a most scientific manner the formation of 

 the skull of the cave lion, with that of our present denizen 

 of the African wilds. An interesting discussion arose be- 

 tween Mr. Sandford and Mr. Dawkins, respecting the 

 probable temperature of this geological period, the more 

 important as not only being a possible period in which 

 man, or some similarly constructed being might have 

 existed, but because of the anomalies it exhibits 

 in the animal world. Mr. Sandford contended that the 



