Symonch — British Fossil Mammals. 413 



3^0a?ICES OIF IMIEIMIOII^S. 



Notes on some of the Fossil Mammals of Great Britain. 



By the Rev. W. S. Symonds, F.G.S., 

 President of the Malvern Naturalists' Field-club. 



[Being the substance of a discourse delivered at Apperlcy Court, the residence of 

 Mis^s Strickland, to the members of the Malvern Naturalists' Field-club, June 30, 

 1868.] 1 



I HAVE on more than one occasion directed the attention of the 

 members of this society to the fossil remains of Mammalia found 

 by the late Mr. Hugh Strickland in old Post-glacial river drifts of an 

 ancient Avon, near the villages of Cropthorne, Bricklehampton, and 

 Fladbury, all in the vicinity of Pershore, Worcestershire. The 

 fossils in the collection at Apperley Court were carefully examined 

 and named last January by Mr. Boyd Dawkins, the well-known 

 comparative anatomist, and among them we find the remains of two 

 species of elephant, E. antiquus and E. primigenius ; the long haired 

 rhinoceros, R. tichorhinus ; many fine teeth and bones of a hippopo- 

 tamus, H. major ; the remains of two large extinct oxen, Bos primi- 

 genius, and Bison prisms ; with many bones and horns of deer, Cervus 

 elaphus ; all of which were associated with fresh- water shells still 

 living in the Avon, with the exception of the TJ7iio littoralis, a Unio 

 which is extinct in Great Britain, although still living in the rivers 

 of France and Spain. It is now ascertained that this group of mam- 

 mals lived in Great Britain during that period which is known to 

 geologists as the Post-glacial period, a period which succeeded the 

 intense cold of the long Glacial epoch. It must, however, be re- 

 membered that the term Post-glacial is rendered in contradistinction 

 to the term Pre -glacial, which is applied to the period which pre- 

 ceded the Glacial epoch ; and that it is not to be supposed that the 

 Post-glacial animals existed after the age of glaciers had altogether 

 ceased in Great Britain : for we now know that in Post-glacial times 

 the climate was very severe, though gradually becoming more tem- 

 perate. There is no greater mistake than to suppose that the term 

 Post-glacial, either as applied to climate or animals, means that the 

 age of glaciers, icebergs, and ice-drifts, or the age of mammoths and 

 rhinoceri had ceased in Great Britain in the times when Post-glacial 

 drifts containing extinct animals were deposited. A few notes, there- 

 fore, on some of the principal fossil mammals, and their range in 

 geologic time, may not be uninteresting on the present occasion. 

 Every one who takes any interest in geology knows that no 

 remains of any fossil quadruped have hitherto been detected in the 

 vast thickness of stratified deposits which constitute the mass of 

 strata from the Laurentian to the Permian, inclusive, and which 

 were deposited during the successive geological periods known as 

 the Primary or Palaeozoic periods. The older rocks up to the close 

 of the Old Eed or Devonian period are all the relics of marine strata, 

 1 From the Worcester' Herald, of July 11th and 18th, 1868. 



