PALAEONTOLOGY 





task of drawing up a list of the fossil vertebrates of Leicester- 

 shire, at least so far as known up to the year 1889, is rendered 

 easy by Mr. Montagu Browne's excellent account of the Vertebrate 

 Animals of Leicestershire and Rutland. The writer is further 

 indebted to Mr. Browne, who formerly had charge of the Town Museum at 

 Leicester, for information with regard to additions to the fossil vertebrate 

 fauna of the county since the date of publication of that work. Commencing 

 with the mammals of the superficial formations, it may be noted that all 

 these belong to the ordinary species, and are consequently in the main of no 

 special interest or importance. An exception in this respect has, however, 

 to be made with regard to two specimens of elephants a skull and a 

 skeleton noticed below, of which unfortunately only fragments were saved. 

 Among the species most numerously represented in the county is the 

 mammoth or extinct Siberian elephant (Elepba s primigenius] , a near relative of 

 the existing Asiatic elephant (. maximus], but distinguished by the narrower 

 and more numerous vertical plates of the molar teeth, as well as by the thick 

 and abundant coat of bristly hair and woolly under-fur which clothed the 

 skin. A molar of this species was discovered in the valley of the Soar in 

 1849, and a tusk in a gravel-pit at Belgrave about 1861 ; while a remarkably 

 fine tusk, originally measuring 1 1 ft. in length, was disinterred in the autumn 

 of 1 86 1 in the gravel of Sydney Street, Belgrave Road, Leicester. A portion 

 of this tusk, as well as the two preceding specimens, is preserved in the 

 Leicester Museum, which also possesses part of a larger but more slender tusk, 

 apparently dug up in Sydney Street in 1867. In 1874 the Leicester Museum 

 received portions of a mammoth molar from a pit by the side of the Midland 

 Railway near Thurmaston, from which large quantities of gravel were dug 

 for ballast. According to information obtained on the spot by Mr. W. J. 

 Harrison, it appears probable that the workmen dug up a whole skull of this 

 mammoth, which, with the exception of the aforesaid molar, was broken up 

 and carted away in a ballast-truck. 1 Such a piece of vandalism is a matter for 

 much regret. Mammoth teeth are also recorded from Keyworth and 

 Kettering ; while a well-preserved specimen was dug up in Wood Street, 

 Belgrave Road, Leicester, in 1883, and examples have been obtained from 

 the Abbey Meadow, near Leicester, and from other localities in the valley of 

 the Soar. In excavating for a gasometer at Loughborough in 1888 a 

 mammoth molar was discovered, and there are several other records of such 

 finds in the county. Special mention must be made of a fine last upper 

 molar from Kirby Park, Melton Mowbray, preserved in the Sedgwick 

 (Woodwardian) Museum at Cambridge, on account of its being described 



1 Browne, op. cit. 27. 



