OVIBOS MOSCHATUS. 



19 



CHAPTER IV. 



FOSSIL OVIBOS IN GREAT BRITAIN. 



Pis. I, I), III, IV, V. 



§. 1 Remains found at Maidenhead and Green- 

 street Green. 

 § 2. Remains found at Freshford. 

 § 3. „ ,, Barnwood. 



§ 4. Remains found at Salisbury. 



§ 5. „ „ Crayford. 



§ 6. The age of the deposit at Crayford. 



§ 7. Range in space and time of Ovibos. 



§ 1. Remains found at Crayford and Green Street Green. — We owe to the Rev. Charles 

 Kingsley and to Sir John Lubbock the first proof of the animal having lived in Britain : and 

 the skull which they discovered in the low-level Thames gravel near Maidenhead in 1855, 

 is described under the name of Bubalus moschatus 1 by Professor Owen, who was probably 

 misled by a hint of Dr. Pallas as to its affinities with the Cape Buffalo. It belonged to 

 an adult male of rather small size ; and, as it is very much broken, the position of the 

 parieto-frontal suture, nearly in the middle of the horncores, is very well shown on the 

 cranial surface. Sir John Lubbock has also been fortunate enough to find a fragmentary 

 skull of a male in the gravels of Green Street Green, near Bromley in Kent, associated 

 with the remains of Bison. Its condition proves that it has been exposed for some time 

 to the attrition of the fluviatile sand and gravel in which it lay. These two skulls are pre- 

 served in the British Museum along with those from Eschscholtz Bay. 



§ 2. Remains found at Freshford. — In the West of England two very well preserved 

 fragments of the skulls of a male and female, PI. V, fig. 1, have been found by Mr. Charles 

 Moore in the gravels of the Avon at Freshford, near Bath. The remains of other animals 

 which I have seen from the same place belong to the Mammoth, Bison, Horse, and 

 Reindeer. In 1866 I examined the locality along with the Rev. H. H. Winwood, E.G.S. 

 In the narrow valley which the river Avon has cut through the Bath and Lower Oolites, 

 into the sands below, are patches of gravel at different heights above the present stream. 



1 'Brit. Assoc. Rep.,' 1856, 'Trans. Sect.,' p. 72. 



