H. H. Hoivorth — A Great Post-Olacial Flood. 269 



the frontal portion of the skull of an Urus, with its horn-cores 

 perfect to the very tips, while around bones of various animals were 

 scattered of Horse, Ehinoceros, Mammoth, Urus, either brown or 

 grizzly Bear and Wolf" (Popular Science Keview, vol. vii. 

 p. 277). 



Not only do the debris of the animals found in these deposits show 

 that they perished here in hecatombs, as in Siberia, in Germany, 

 and in Fi-ance, but the correlated beds furnish proof of another 

 kind of the violent character of the catastrophe by which the great 

 mammalia were exterminated. Although not strictly within the area 

 to which this paper is devoted, I would quote as a remarkable case 

 the discovery of the Hippopotamus remains made in 1852 by Mr. 

 Denny, near Leeds. Great portions of the skeletons of two or three 

 large specimens of Hippopotamus major were there discovered at a 

 height of 150 feet above the sea, and 20 feet above the banks of the 

 Aire. The bones, says Mr. Denny, were discovered in a dark-blue 

 sedimentary clay, almost approaching mud, and appear from their 

 condition to have lived and died in the immediate vicinity. They 

 were found drifted together with fragments of trees. The skeletons 

 seem to have been complete when deposited, the vertebral column of 

 one individual extended in a line across the trench, the ribs being in 

 situ, and Mr. Denny considered that the animal must have been lying 

 on its side (Denny, quoted by Tylor, Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xxv. p. 64). 



This discovery is most apposite. The Hippopotamus is essentially 

 an amphibious animal, living most of its time in rivers, and accus- 

 tomed to fluviatile floods. We can hardly suppose that three large 

 specimens of the race should have been overwhelmed close together 

 and close by a Mammoth and a Urus, whose remains were found in 

 adjoining beds, by a mere flooded river, even when we postulate a 

 pluvial period. They surely demand a much more overwhelming 

 catastrophe. 



If we turn from the contents of these beds to their internal struc- 

 ture, we shall find that while the lower portions of them bear the 

 character, as we have said, of the diluvium gris, the upper beds 

 bear on the contrary traces of a violent agitation. Take, for instance, 

 the well-known section at Ilford. Above the beds containing the 

 animal remains which were so largely collected by Sir Antonio 

 Brady, there is, to use my friend Mr. Dawkins' words, " a layer of 

 clay, brick-earth, and gravel (No. 5, in his section), irregular and 

 twisted, and folded in a remarkable way, somewhat after the manner 

 of the contorted drift on the Norfolk coast. It contains," he says, 

 " pebbles of quartz, Lydian stone, sandstone, angular and waterworn 

 flints, and fragments of grey wethers, one of which weighed 26 

 pounds. Some of the pebbles are imbedded with their long axes 

 vertically, and therefore could not have been deposited by water." 

 This stratum has been designated Loess by Mr. Prestwich, and it 

 affords a good proof of the horizon on which these beds really exist. 

 It agrees with the Loess, and also with the well-known beds in the 

 Somme Valley, in various characters, and especially in the presence of 

 these very stones with their long axes arranged vertically. 



