A HISTORY OF ESSEX 



caballus]^ wild boar (Sus scrofa), red deer (Cervus elaphus), roebuck (Cap- 

 reolus capreolus), reindeer (Rangifer tarandus], elk (Alces machlis), Celtic 

 shorthorn (Bos taurus), wild ox (Bos taurus primigenius], goat (Capra 

 bircus) and beaver (Castor fiber). The Celtic shorthorn, it may be ob- 

 served, is frequently alluded to as Bos longifrons or Bos taurus longifrons ; 

 but since it is believed to be only a domesticated breed it has no more 

 claim to a distinct name (other than Bos taurus) than has the modern 

 shorthorn or any other existing breed. The alluvial marshes extend 

 some way along the Lea valley, the British Museum possessing a fine 

 pair of red deer antlers dug up at Edmundsea near Waltham Abbey. 

 Remains of the Celtic shorthorn have also been recorded from Audley 

 End, Clacton and Walton. 



The Walthamstow deposits have also yielded a wing-bone of a 

 species of sea-eagle. This specimen, now in the British Museum, was 

 at one time regarded by the present writer * as probably belonging to the 

 Pacific HaliaStus pelagicus. The recent skeleton in the British Museum 

 on which the determination was made has however been found to have 

 been wrongly named, and the Walthamstow specimen probably belongs 

 to the European H. albicilla. 



Remains of existing species of mammals have been found in the 

 prehistoric deposits of other places in the county, but there would be no 

 advantage in alluding to them in detail. Reference is made in the 

 chapter on geology to the occurrence in the alluvium of Beckton, 

 Woolwich, of remains of the wild boar, red deer, Celtic shorthorn, wild 

 ox, dolphin (Delpbinus delpbis) and a whale. It may be added that from 

 the marshes of East Ham have been disinterred remains of the bottle- 

 nosed whale (Hyperob'don rostratus), a species which is one of the most 

 common cetacean visitors to the British shores. A skull and vertebra? 

 (now in the British Museum) of the blackfish (Globicepbalus me/as) have 

 been dug up in the marshes at Barking Creek. Teeth of the sperm-whale 

 (Physeter macrocephalus) have also been recorded from the estuarine 

 turbary of the county. 



Passing on to the consideration of the vertebrate remains from the 

 brickearths, valley gravels and other deposits which, from containing a 

 percentage of extinct mammals, may be regarded as of Pleistocene rather 

 than prehistoric age, it may be mentioned in the first place that many 

 of these are not strictly contemporaneous with one another. Evidence 

 of this is afforded by a difference in the mammalian fauna. At Chelms- 

 ford 2 for instance we have the mammoth, the woolly rhinoceros and 

 the hippopotamus, whereas at Great Yeldham 3 the hippopotamus is 

 wanting and the woolly rhinoceros replaced by the slender-nosed species, 

 the mammoth being common to both deposits. 



The most interesting of all these animals is the Essex monkey, the 

 sole evidence of whose former existence is a single upper molar tooth in 

 a fragment of the jaw which was obtained from Grays, and is now in the 



1 Cat. Fossil Birds Brit. Mus. p. 23 (1891). z See E. T. Newton, Essex Naturalist, ix. 16 (1895). 



8 See Holmes, ibid. 115 (1896). 



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