] 20 MUSTELID^I. 



sides of the river, as far as the sea-coast. In Littleport- 

 fen, below Ely, those marsh lands are of very wide extent, 

 and are gradually blended with the great marshes of the 

 Bedford level. The turf-bogs are of irregular thickness, 

 varying from two or three feet, up to fourteen or fifteen 

 feet, and rest either immediately upon the gault, Kimme- 

 ridge clay, and Oxford clay, or more rarely upon the thin 

 beds of gravel which have been partially drifted over these 

 great horizontal argillaceous deposits. In all the fens under 

 cultivation the turf-bog is cut through in various places to 

 get at the subjacent clay, which is now commonly used as a 

 top dressing for the corn- land : in digging for this clay 

 blackened bones are occasionally found immediately under the 

 bog, and, therefore, either resting on the marly surface of the 

 Kimmeridge and Oxford clays or on the surface of the thin 

 layers of drifted and finely comminuted gravel, composed of 

 flints from the chalk escarpment, and of pebbles from the 

 green sands and oolites. On such a bed, beneath about 

 ten feet of peat-bog, the fractured skull and lower jaw, with 

 a few other bones, of the Otter, were found associated with 

 the antlers of a Roe-buck. 



They presented the same blackened colour and increased 

 specific gravity that characterise the bones of the Bear, 

 Wolf, Wild Boar, and Beaver, which have been found under 

 similar circumstances, and, like these animals, which now no 

 longer exist in England, the Otter in question must have 

 lived before the fen-lands began to accumulate. 



The jaws which preserve their series of teeth nearly com- 

 plete, exhibit the characteristic dentition of the Otter ; the 

 incisors {fig. 44, *) are wanting : the canines (?) are shorter 

 than those of the Fox, narrower than those of the Badger, 

 larger and relatively thicker than those of the Martin-cat, 

 and might, therefore, be recognised if found detached ; p* 



