DEPOSITS OF THAMES VALLEY. 639 



be a genus unknown in Europe (p. 153), is, as I learn from Mr. Wood- 

 ward, a living Sicilian shell, called by some naturalists C. 'panormitana. 

 With these fossils, and with the Hippopotamus and inonkey above 

 alluded to, the remains of Rhinoceros leptorhinus are found ; while the 

 accompanying elephant is not the Mammoth, as formerly imagined, 

 but, according to Dr. Falconer, Elephas antiquiis, and sometimes E. 

 p)risciis. 



It is still a matter of discussion whether the submergence of a great 

 part of the Southeast of England beneath the sea of the glacial epoch, 

 during w'hich the Northern erratics of Norfolk and Suifolk, and of 

 Highgate Hill, near London, were drifted southwards by ice, took place 

 before or after the origin of these deposits at Grays, Ilford, and other 

 places on the banks of the Thames ; but it is quite clear that after those 

 fiuviatile beds were formed, a great sheet of ochreous gravel was spread 

 out over the lower levels of the same valley, and in it we find buried 

 the remains of Arctic quadrupeds. This ochreous gravel extends from 

 East to West, from above Maidenhead, through London, to the sea, for 

 a distance of 50 miles, having a width varying from 2 to 9 miles, and 

 a thickness of from 5 to 15 feet."^ In many places it contains the bones 

 and teeth of the Siberian Mammoth [E. i^rimigenius) and Siberian 

 Rhinoceros {R. tichorhinus), together with remains of the reindeer, 

 horse, and other quadrupeds. 



Recently (1855) three fossil skulls, referred by Prof. Owen to the 

 Musk-buffalo [Buhalus moschatus), a well-known living inhabitant of 

 Arctic regions, have also been discovered ; one of them in the valley of 

 the Thames at Maidenhead, and the other two in gravel of the same 

 age near Batheaston, in the valley of the Avon. 



The same musk-buffalo was met with about 20 years ago in the sub- 

 urbs of Berlin, in the hill called the Kreuzberg, imbedded in northern 

 drift, and with it the Siberian Elephant and Rhinoceros, together with 

 species of horse, deer, and ox.f 



Among the fossil mammalia of another locality in the same drift of 

 ' North Germany, Dr. Hensel, of Berlin, has detected, near Quedlinburg, 

 the Norwegian Lemming, My odes lemmus, and another species of the 

 same family called by Pallas Myodes torquatus (by Hensel Misother- 

 mus torquatus), a still more Arctic quadruped found by Parry in lati- 

 tude 82°, and which never strays farther south than the northern borders 

 of the woody region. Professor Beyrich also informs me that the 

 remains of the Rhinoceros ticliorhinus were obtained at the same place.;]] 

 In this "diluvium," as it is termed by many, no instance has as yet 



* Prestwicli ; GeoL Quart. Journ., voL xii. p. 131. 



f 1 was shown in the Berlin Museum, in 1856, part of the skull of the Buha- 

 lus moschatus, correctly named in the catalogue of the Museum for 1837, the year 

 after its discovery, by Professor Quenstedt, at that time curator. The associated 

 Kreuzberg fossils are enumerated in Leonhard and Bronn's Jahrbuch, 1836, 

 p. 215. 



% Zeitschrift der Deutsch. Geol. Gesellschaft, vol. vii. (1855), p. 548, &c. 



