542 BAL^ENODON. 



between the Physeterida and Balanida of the present 

 creation. 



That the fossil ear-bones and Cetacean teeth of the 

 Red Crag, have been washed out of the subjacent eocene 

 beds, is probable from the fact of a Cetotolite having been 

 discovered in the London clay itself; and from fragments 

 of other fossil Cetaceous bones having been obtained from 

 the same formation. In the Hunterian collection of fossils, 

 I have determined five considerable fragments of bone to 

 be cetaceous : they were recorded to be " from Harwich 

 Cliff, Essex,"" 5 ' and were in the same completely petrified 

 condition as the fossil ear-bones from the Red Crag. 



The remains of great Whales, referrible to existing 

 genera or species, have been found in Britain, in gravel- 

 beds adjacent to estuaries or large rivers, in marine drift 

 or shingle, as the " Elephant-bed" near Brighton,-f- and in 

 the newer pliocene clay-beds : but although these depo- 

 sitories belong to very recent periods in Geology, the situ- 

 ations of the cetaceous fossils generally indicate a gain 

 of dry land from the sea. Thus the skeleton of a Balee- 

 noptera, seventy-two feet in length, found imbedded in 

 clay on the banks of the Forth, was more than twenty 

 feet above the reach of the highest tide. Several bones 

 of a whale, discovered at Dumore Rock, Stirlingshire, 

 in brick-earth, were nearly forty feet above the pre- 

 sent level of the sea. Sir George Mackenzie has re- 



* ' Catalogue of Fossil Mammalia, and Birds,' 4to. 1844, Nos. mcccclv, and 

 mcccclix, p. 291. 



t See Dr. Mantell's graphic account of his discovery of a fossil jaw of a whale 

 (Balcena mysticetus) in this deposit. 'Medals of Creation,' vol. ii. p. 824. 



