X INTEODUCTION. 



From this Table it will be gathered that, speaking generally, from earlier to later 

 times the strata of the Fayum were deposited nearer and nearer to some land-mass. 

 In the early Eocene the presence of thick marine beds far to the southwards shows 

 that the shores of the Ethiopian continent were still remote from the area now under 

 discussion ; and this state of things seems to have continued till the Middle Eocene, as 

 shown by the thick nummulitic beds of the Wadi Rayan series, and the exclusively 

 marine character of the fossils both of those heds, the Ravine beds, and the Birket-el- 

 Quruu series above. In the Qasr-el-Sagha series, on the other hand, there is much 

 evidence that the shore was not far off, the presence of thick beds of clay, often 

 current-bedded and containing numerous impressions of leaves, as well as the 

 occurrence of land-mammals pointing to this conclusion. In fact, the deposits at this 

 horizon may he regarded as partly marine and partly littoral, there having been 

 many small oscillations of level. In the Fluvio-marine (Upper Eocene) beds above, 

 the near presence of a large land-mass is still more obvious, these deposits being, in 

 fact, almost entirely fiuviatile, and probably representing the remains of the delta of a 

 great river which Mr. Beadnell, for various reasons, considers flowed from the 

 south-west *. At or near the end of the Eocene period this state of things was 

 interrupted by an outburst of volcanic activity, which gave rise to the interhedded 

 basalt-sheets of the Jebel-el-Qatrani (see Map) ; hut after this the fiuviatile conditions 

 were again resumed and appear to have continued with some interruptions throughout 

 the Oligocene, Miocene, and, in part at least, the Pliocene periods. Throughout this 

 vast epoch there seems to have been a general tendency towards a gradual advance of the 

 coast-line northwards, and such interruptions and oscillations as did occur are marked 

 by the presence of interhedded marine, littoral, and perhaps, in a few cases, lacustrine 

 deposits. This long series of Fluvio-marine beds offers just the conditions necessary 

 for the preservation of a succession of vertebrate faunas, and, in fact, these have already 

 been found at two horizons in addition to the Eocene beds with which this Catalogue 

 is mainly concerned, namely, in the Lower Miocene and the Middle Pliocene. So 

 long ago as about 1898, Dr. Blanckenhorn discovered remains of a Rhinoceros and of 

 an Anthracotheroid Mammal {Brachyodus africanus), together with other vertebrate 

 fossils, in the Lower Miocene beds of Mogara, which lies to the north-west of the 

 Fayum about five days' march. This collection was afterwards described by the present 

 writer (4, 5), who later, with the late Mr. Barron of the Egyptian Survey, revisited 

 the locality, where they obtained, in addition to the forms already known, remains of 



* ' Eeport on the Fayum Province,' p. 66. 



