BRITISH POSTGLACIAL 6- RECENT DEPOSITS. 457 



belong to an early postglacial age, and seem to have become 

 extinct in England in days probably long anterior to the Eoman 

 invasion. The mammoth is generally excluded by geologists 

 from the post-pleistocene fauna of Britain. Its remains, how- 

 ever, have certainly been recorded from what seem to be true 

 post-pleistocene or postglacial deposits. 1 It is doubtful, how- 

 ever, whether these recorded instances can always be depended 

 upon. But although the few remains which have at rare 

 intervals turned up may in some cases be derivative — that is to 

 say, washed out of older deposits and re-imbedded in postglacial 

 alluvia and peat, yet this will hardly account for the occurrence 

 of the two perfect heads of the mammoth in the peat at Holy- 

 head, in Anglesea, nor for the peat-stained molar, which came 

 from the submerged forest of Torbay. Neither Sir Charles 

 Lyell, Dr. Falconer, nor Mr. Pengelly had any doubt about the 

 matter, but were of opinion that the mammoth survived in 

 England down to the period when the so-called submarine 

 forests were growing. The heads referred to lay two feet below 

 the surface, in a bed of peat which was covered with stiff blue 

 clay, and formed the shoreward prolongation of the submarine 

 forest and peat which were observed at low-water in the harbour 

 by the Hon. W, Stanley. Some of the other instances are not 

 perhaps so remarkable, and might be " explained away." It is 

 worth note, at all events, that the discoveries appear to have 

 been made in deposits either at or below the present sea-level. 

 Nowhere, so far as I know, have mammoth-remains been detected 

 in any of the post-pleistocene or postglacial deposits of the inland 

 districts. It might be supposed, therefore, that the teeth and 

 tusks which have been found here and there in postglacial 

 deposits bordering upon the sea are possibly derivative. Had 

 the mammoth occupied England in postglacial times, surely we 

 might have expected to meet with its remains in alluvia and 

 peat-deposits like those of the Kennet valley, where the postgla- 



1 See Lyell's Principles of Geology, vol. i. 11th ed., p, 550 ; Trans. Tyneside 

 Naturalists' Club, vol. v. p. Ill ; Trans. Devon. Assoc, vol. iii. p. 143 ; iv. p. 

 455 ; v. p. 39 ; vi. pp. 232, 683 ; ix. p. 84. 



