PALZONTOLOGY 
O far as the fossil remains of vertebrated animals are concerned, 
Cumberland may be said to have practically no history. The 
absence of such fossils is to a great extent attributable to two 
causes. In the first place a very large proportion of the rocks 
of the county belong to periods when vertebrate life was either absent or 
but feebly represented. In addition to this, as mentioned in the chapter 
on Geology, the Devonian rocks of Cumberland are unfossiliferous ; 
while no vertebrate remains appear to have been recorded from the 
Carboniferous deposits within the limits of the county, although in many 
other districts these yield more or less numerous teeth and other remains 
of fishes. In the second place the whole of the surface of the county 
appears to have been completely enveloped in ice during the Glacial 
epoch, when it would have been extremely unsuitable for the presence of 
a large fauna, while there would also have been but a poor chance for 
the remains of such as did exist to have been preserved. 
So far as the writer can ascertain, the only fossil remains of verte- 
brates that have been recorded as occurring in the county are those of a 
few mammals obtained during the excavation of the new docks at Silloth. 
These were first described by an anonymous writer,’ who recorded the 
antler of a red deer (Cervus elaphus), the humerus, or upper bone of the 
fore-leg, of the aurochs, or extinct wild ox (Bos taurus primigentus), and 
a tail-vertebra of a species of fin-whale (Ba/enoptera). Subsequently 
Mr. J. Leitch’ figured the humerus above-mentioned and recorded two 
skulls and other bones of the wild ox from the same locality. 
1 Trans. Cumberland Assoc., vol. viii. p. 210 (1882). 
® Ibid. vol. ix. p. 164 (1884). 
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