E. H. Eoicorth — The Mammoth in Europe. 251 



III. — The Mammoth in Europe. 

 By Henry H. Howokth, F.S.A. 



[Continued from page 205.) 



IN France deposits of the same kind, such as those at Menche- 

 court, are familiar enough. To complete our merely illustrative 

 list of examples, I would quote the vast deposits found in the offing 

 of the Thames, and right away to the Dutch coast. Dr. Bree says 

 that the bones occur in such quantities on the sea-bottom off Dun- 

 kirk that the sailors call it the Burying Ground (Leith Adams's 

 Mem. on Elephas primigejiius, p. 73). 



The identity of conditions in Europe and Siberia is carried out in 

 other details. The deposit in which the bones occur is in both 

 a fresh-water one, consisting of marly clay and of gravel, and its 

 contents are of the same class. We mentioned in a previous paper 

 how Schmidt found the remains of the Mammoth mixed with land and 

 fluviatile shells. This is precisely the character of the corresponding 

 beds in Western Europe, only that in the latter, from the fact of 

 their having been examined with much more critical care, the 

 number of species of such shells recorded is very much greater. 



The discover}'- of these fresh-water shells is so constant, and they 

 are so exceedingly numerous in the beds containing Mammoths' 

 remains, etc., that it is perfectly useless to enumerate in detail the 

 localities where they have occurred. In Ireland, in the marl under- 

 lying the peat, with the Megaceros ; in England, in various neigh- 

 bourhoods with the so-called Pleistocene fauna ; and in France, in 

 beds of the same horizon. We are told that sixty-five species of 

 such shells have been found at Mencbecourt, thirty-three at Saint- 

 Acheul, and eighteen at Saint-Eoch. They have been found in the 

 valley of the Saone, of the Somme, in Dauphiny, and the Jura. The 

 Loess in the valley of the Rhine and its tributaries is very full of 

 such shells ; so are the similar deposits in the Vosges and the Black 

 Forest. 



In the 29th volume of the Bulletin of the French Geological 

 Society, p. 332, will be found an account of similar deposits in the 

 valley of the Danube, also containing shells of the same class. The 

 fact is they may be said to be universally present in these beds. 

 The great abundance of their remains prove that the conditions must 

 have been singularly favourable for the development of such 

 molluscs. They point the same moral as the similar shells found in 

 Siberia. 



The species, with the exception of a few to which I shall revert 

 presently, are the same as those still found in the Western Palasarctic 

 region. M. Daubree says of the shells found in the Loess of the 

 Rhine Valley that some species are ver}'' common, namely, Snccinea 

 oblonga. var. elongata, Helix kispida, JPupa muscorum. Helix arbusto- 

 rum, Claiisilia parviila, Pupa columella, Pupa edentnlata, Helix 

 cry stall ina, Clausilia gracilis, Helix pidchella, Helix montana, Pupa 

 dolium, Clausilia duhia, Pupa pygmcea, Pulimus luhricus, and Pupa 

 secale. Seven other species are very rare. Of the whole number only 



