1803.] 



FISHER LEXBEN" BRTCk'-PIT. 



39< 



River Colne. 



IB 



m% 



'~Ph 



73 



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Occupying a trough about 30 feet wide 

 in this gravel, and running parallel with the 

 southern boundary, where the newer strata 

 abut upon the older gravel, is found a deposit 

 of fine grey clay passing into carbonaceous 

 clay with rootlets, and resting upon it a bed 

 of peat (e), In the central and thickest part 

 the peat measures about a foot in depth, and 

 the grey clay 3 feet. The clay extends 

 north and south beyond the edges of the 

 peat, and both are planed off above to one 

 general surface. A thin seam of whitish 

 gravel and yellow clay, and, above that, about 

 a foot of whitish clay, cover these deposits, 

 and pass upwards into the main bed of brown 

 brick-earth (d) hereafter to be described. 



As far as Palaeontology is concerned, the 

 interest of the locality is confined to this re- 

 markable trough, which has formed a perfect 

 cemetery for the pachyderms of the period. 

 Elephas primigenius is found abundantly, 

 associated with Rhinoceros leptorhinus, of 

 which latter animal some fine jaws were ob- 

 tained here by Mr. Brown, who placed them 

 in the British Museum. Their bones lie upon 

 the surface of the clay immediately beneath 

 the peat, while their condition shows that 

 they have been affected by contact with it. 

 The peat itself contains an amazing number 

 of fragments of Beetles in a remarkable state 

 of preservation. I collected as many speci- 

 mens as I could find in the portion of peat 

 that had been dug out during the past win- 

 ter, and submitted them to the inspection of 

 my friend Mr. Wollaston, and I have ap- 

 pended his highly interesting description of 

 them to this paper. 



The peat has almost thinned out at the 

 point which the excavations have reached 

 towards the east ; but what remains of it 

 seems unaltered in character, as if it were 

 the remaining portion of a thicker mass, of 

 which the upper part has been removed by 

 denudation. 



In digging the brick-earth, the workmen 

 are now stopped at the south end of the pit 

 by a bank of sandy gravel (c), with a slope of 

 about 30°. This I concluded to be a talus of 

 the ancient bank of the valley ; and accord- 

 ingly, upon digging into it, I found that its 



2e2 



