4 KAMBLES BOUND FOLKESTONE. 



But where is the river that laid it down ? Was it 

 the stream which cut out the Folkestone valley, the 

 representative of which now ignobly creeps along 

 under the Viaduct, and then, hastening out of sight 

 through the mill and along the back of Tontine 

 Street, buries itself in the Harbour ? Can that be 

 the impoverished descendant of a river on whose 

 banks the huge Mammoth found food, hi whose 

 rushy bed the Hippopotamus bathed ? Who knows ? 

 And when was it all done ? Can we tell the ages ? * 

 Certainly at that time, whenever it was, the extinct 

 elephant was no scarce beast in the locality; its 

 bones cannot be said to be uncommon, they are now 

 and then turned up out of the clay in the brickfields. 

 Part of a fine shoulder blade, now in the Museum, 

 was disinterred in 1876 near the Cheriton Arch, 

 close by the spot where, a few months before, some 

 teeth and bones of the Khinoceros were found. I 

 have also a box full of bones belonging to a skeleton 

 of a very small Mammoth found on Park Farm in 

 1868. A very slight exercise of the imagination 

 suffices to picture out the stores of vegetation which 

 must have covered all this district, as necessary to 

 support these huge mammals. Like their modern 

 representatives in Africa, they would require a 

 luxuriant herbage, and we may fairly compare this 

 district with their present dwelling place. But they 



* I am constantly asked by those whose curiosity exceeds 

 their taste for geology how many years ago it is since these 

 creatures lived. But the geologist reckons not by years, 

 cannot so reckon, however much he may wish it. His chro- 

 nology is relative, not absolute, for he has no certain data 

 on which to base his calculations. 



