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PROCEEDINGS OE THE GEOLOGICAX SOCIETY. 



[May 8, 



the flint implement. On a subsequent visit, Mr. Evans found a 

 small fragment of the tooth of elephant in this gravel high up in the 

 cliff. This freshwater bed forms one of a series which, commencing 

 at Chislet*near Grove Ferry, where the deposit contains the Cyrena 

 fluminalis with other fresh- water and also some few marine fossils, 

 seems to fringe, at intervals, this range of hills. This particular 

 deposit at Swalecliff, although consisting of tenacious clay with an 

 interstratified bed of sand and of gravel, is more analogous to the 

 loess in its organic remains than to the "Wear Farm deposit ; for 

 hitherto, although the Pupa marginata and Succinea oblong a are 

 extremely abundant, and a small Helix is not rare, yet I have not been 

 able to obtain a single truly aquatic shell. The relation of these 

 beds to the boulder-clay is not here shown. 



Bedfordshire. — Another important and better-observed discovery 

 has just been made near Bedford, by Mr. James Wyatt, F.G.S. A few 

 years since, a remarkable number of the bones of the Elephant, Rhino- 

 ceros, Hippopotamus, Ox, Horse, and Deer were discovered in cutting 

 through a bank of gravel about one mile north of Bedford on the 

 Great Northern line of railwayf . Mr. Evans and I shortly after- 

 wards, accompanied by Mr. Wyatt, visited this and other sections of 

 gravel near Bedford. The following year Mr. Evans discovered in 

 the large gravel-pit at Biddenham, two miles W.N.W. from Bedford, 

 both land- and freshwater- shells at a depth of 8 feet from the sur- 

 face. These circumstances, combined with the experience acquired 

 by a visit to Amiens in the autumn of 1860, induced Mr. Wyatt to 

 turn his particular attention to this pit, which has since been to him 

 the object of almost a daily pilgrimage. After a search, continued 

 for many months, he has at last been rewarded by finding two well- 

 formed flint implements, one of the spear-head shape and the other 

 oval, — counterparts, in fact, of the two chief French types. The men 

 had been digging deeper than usual, and it was in a heap of gravel 

 just thrown out from a depth of about 13 feet that Mr. Wyatt found 

 on the same day both specimens. A letterj from that gentleman 

 gives the details of his interesting discovery. I have since visited 

 the pit in company with Sir Charles Lyell, Mr. Evans, and Mr. Wyatt. 

 It is situated on slightly rising ground, about 30 to 35 feet above the 

 level of the adjacent Biver Ouse (fig. 3). It happens that there is an 

 old well in this pit, the sill of which is about 7 feet below the former 

 level of the ground. I ascertained the level of the water to be 21 feet 

 9 inches below the siU. This therefore gives us 29 feet from the 

 top of the ground ; and if we add, say one foot, for the fall of the 

 water-line to the river, we have 30 feet as the height here of the 

 top of the gravel a above the level of the river. The following is 



* See another paper by the author, in the Journal of the Society, vol. si. p. 111. 



t A very large quantity of the bones were collected by Mr. Reade ; but unfor- 

 tunately no systematic search was made, and, with this exception, no collection 

 formed. 



% It is not now necessary to publish this letter, as it is embodied in a communi- 

 cation (to which I beg to refer the reader) by Mr. Wyatt, to the 'Geologist' of June, 

 in which the sections used in illustration of this paper and other particulars are 

 reproduced. 



