UNCLE IN ENGLAND. 269 



they had not lost their colour and become more 

 brittle. My uncle shewed us a few specimens of 

 these, and also of some shells, which he says are 

 peculiar to fresh water, but which are often found 

 in alternate layers with the marine shells, as if 

 they had been deposited by alternate inundations 

 of fresh and salt water. And lastly, he shewed 

 us some of the shells found in a horizontal stra- 

 tum of gravel on the coasts of Essex and Suffolk, 

 about fifty feet above the sea, which are exactly 

 the same with the shells at present existing in the 

 sea on the same coast. Above all these regular 

 strata, he says, there is in many places spread a 

 confused covering of gravel, apparently formed 

 by the action of a deluge, which had shattered 

 and rounded the fragments of the rocks over 

 which its torrents had swept. 



In this gravel the remains of numerous land 

 quadrupeds are found; many of them of species 

 now unknown, such as the mastodon, and mam- 

 moth or fossil elephant, with varieties of the 

 Iiya3na, bear, rhinoceros, and elk, but indiscrimi- 

 nately mingled with others, which still exist in 

 the country. 



1 have taken a good deal of pains to acquire 

 a clear idea of this order of the strata, with their 

 vegetable and animal remains. My uncle did 

 not shew them all at one time, we went over them 

 by degrees, a ftttle every day ; but I have just 



2 A .3 



