4 NOTE ON ELEPHAS MERIDIONALIS. 



lias been traced in the Italian interglacial beds, on the plains of 

 Arezzo, and in the freshwater beds of the Upper Val d'Arno, also in 

 the French interglacial beds of Perrier near Issoire, in the Valley 

 of the Allier, where it is associated with the Mammoth, also in a 

 Pleistocene alluvial deposit in the Valley of the Rhine, between 

 Lyons and Bourg. In England deposits of the Pliocene age occur 

 in the submerged Forest-bed of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex, and 

 in the high and low-gravels of the Thames Valley, which contain 

 the same association of Mammalian remains as in the sub-Appenine 

 Pliocenes of the Valleys of the Po and of the Arno. These are over- 

 laid by beds of boulder-clay of the Glacial Period and by superficial 

 gravels of the post-glacial ages. The Crag is the lowest British horizon 

 in which Proboscidian remains have been found Mastodon, Eleplias 

 meridionali*, Eleplias antiquus, together with Hippopotamus and 

 Rhinoceros Etruscus (leptorhinus). Elephas antiquus has been 

 found at Bracklesham Bay, in the Isle of "Wight, and at Pagharn 

 Harbour in Suffolk, in mud-deposits, which were evidently laid 

 down when the temperature was moderately high. These are 

 doubtless the oldest Pliocene beds in England, contemporary with 

 the fluviatile beds of Gray's Turrock in Essex. 



The probable climatal condition of Europe during the Pliocene 

 age may be inferred from the Hippopotamus, whose remains are 

 locally abundant in the beds of that period. It is an amphibious 

 animal, spending the day either floating on, or swimming near the 

 surface of the rivers they inhabit, and roaming at night to feed on and 

 near its bank. Wherever it is now found there is open water all 

 the year round. A frost of twenty-four hours' duration, sufficiently 

 severe to freeze over the lakes or rivers it inhabited, would cause a 

 disastrous annihilation of every Hippopotamus thus imprisoned. 

 It appears to have been spread over the whole of the Pliocene area 

 of England in the Valleys of the Severn, the Avon, the Thames, 

 Kirkdale Cave, and Kent's Hole. It has been found at Motcombe 

 in this county. A comparative warm temperature throughout the 

 year may be also inferred by the presence of southern freshwater 

 shells which are now extinct in England. 



