254 PROBOSCIDIA. 



A femur of the Mammoth, from the drift gravel at 

 Abingdon, is preserved in the Ashmolean Museum. It is 

 remarkable for its fine state of preservation, and exhibits 

 the same character of the extinct species as the foregoing 

 specimen. 



Captain Byam Martin has recorded the following dimen- 

 sions of the femur of a Mammoth, which was trawled up in 

 twenty to twenty-five fathoms water about midway between 

 Yarmouth and the coast of Holland. 



Inches. 



Entire length ..... 49 



Circumference of the head of the bone . . 24 



of the middle of the shaft . . 18 



above the condyles . . .29 



Width across the head and great trochanter . 18 



The femur of the Mammoth, described by the notable 

 French surgeon Habicot, in his " Gigantosteologie, 1613," 

 as the thigh-bone of Theutobochus, king of the Cimbrians, 

 which was said to be five feet in length, indicates a speci- 

 men larger than that to which the humerus from Cromer 

 belonged. M. de Blainville is, however, of opinion that 

 the femur in question belonged to a Mastodon. 



In the skeleton {fig. 85), * is the iliac bone, is the 

 ischium, /"the femur or thigh-bone, t the tibia or leg-bone, 

 fi the fibula or small bone of the leg, ta the tarsus or ankle - 

 bones. 



Strata and Localities. Of all the extinct Mammalia 

 which have left their fossil remains in British strata, no 

 species was more abundant or more widely distributed than 

 the Mammoth or ElepJias primigenius. 



Wherever the last general geological force has left traces 

 of its operations upon the present surface, in the form 

 of drift or unstratified transported fragments of rock and 

 gravel, and wherever the contemporary or immediately 



