492 James Carter — On a Bos primigenius killed with a Celt. 



Near here a boring was carried down to a depth of about 600 ft. 

 in search of Coal, but without success. The Eed Marl was not 

 " bottomed." In the Eadstock Coal-field most of the mines are sunk 

 through this formation, some even commence in the Inferior Oolite 

 and penetrate the underlying rocks, the Lias, Rhsetic beds, and Eed 

 Marl, to the Coal-measures, but the maximum thickness of these 

 rocks is much thinner on that side of the Mendips than it is to the 

 south. There is little doubt that the Coal-measures occur to the south 

 of the Mendips, and at a workable depth : the structure of the Mendip 

 Hills being, geologically speaking, an anticlinal or " saddle," which 

 has brought the older rocks to the surface in a fold or ridge, leaving 

 the newer Coal-measures resting conformably on their flanks, partly 

 exposed or very thinly covered by the Secondary rocks on the north 

 of the Mendips, and entirely concealed on the South. A boring would 

 probably have to be continued a thousand feet there to prove the 

 question, and should the great Sub-Wealden exploration prove suc- 

 cessful so far as regards the finding of coal, perhaps the land- 

 holders of Somerset may be induced to combine and make a trial 

 sinking south of the Mendips. 



II. — On a Skull of Bos primigenius perforated by a Stone Celt. 

 By James Carter, M.E.C.S., etc. 



N 1863 the skull and a portion of the skeleton of a large extinct 

 species of Ox [B. primigenius), which had been found in the peat 

 of the Cambridgeshire Fens, and which apparently had been killed 

 by a celt, was placed in the Woodwardian Museum at Cambridge. 

 At the time of its deposition there a portion of the flint remained 

 firmly fixed in a fracture in the frontal bone, being partially retained 

 in situ by a mass of peat : as, however, this peat gradually dried, it 

 crumbled away, and the celt became loosened and displaced ; more- 

 over, some small fragments of bone fell away from the margin of 

 the wound, so that in its present condition the specimen merely 

 exhibits an irregular fracti;re in the forehead, in which a fragment 

 of a flint implement lies loosely ; but it no longer furnishes con- 

 clusive and positive evidence to prove that the fracture was actually 

 caused by the celt which occuj)ies it. 



The scientific value and interest of the object therefore must now 

 in great measure rest upon the testimony of those observers who 

 examined it soon after its discovery, and when it was in such con- 

 dition as to admit of no doubt as to the correct interpretation of the 

 facts which it presented. 



I therefore publish a portion of a paper which I r-ead before the 

 Cambridge Philosophical Society in May, 1863 : — 



In January, 1863, some workmen who were employed in Burwell 

 Fen, about ten miles from Cambridge, in digging through the peat 

 for the purpose of quarrying phosphatic nodules from the Upper 

 Greensand, came upon the skeleton of a large Ox — Bos primigenius. 

 A few days after discovery, the upper portion of the skull, with the 

 horn-cores complete, and with the peat from which it had been dug 



