284 ON THE FOSSIL BONES OF PACHYDERMATOUS QUADRUPED.- - 



Mr. Howsbip, a clever surgeon of London, from whom I have re- 

 ceived several most important communications relative to the subject 

 of this work, has sent me the drawing of the lower jaw of an elephant, 

 found at Newnham, near Rugby in Warwickshire. In the same spot, 

 they discovered the skull of a rhinoceros, which I shall speak of in its 

 proper place. 



This jaw has the same obtuse form, and the same large molares with 

 delicate plates, as all the other jaws of the fossil elephant, which I 

 have described farther on. 



The Edinburgh Philosophical Journal of April, 1821, page 426, gives 

 an account of the discovery of the tusk of an elephant, on the occasion of 

 openingthe Union Canal near Linlithgow, about 1 8 miles from Edinburgh, 

 and states that Mr. Bald, who found it, had read a paper upon it to the 

 Wernerian Society. But a short time since, some bones of elephants 

 were found in a cavern near Kirkdale in Yorkshire, in the valley of the 

 Grove, a little river which falls into the Rye. They were lying con- 

 fusedly intermixed with the bones of hyenas, tygers, the rhinoceros, 

 and hippopotami, as well as with those of a large species of stag, and of 

 some other ruminant animals. There were also some bones belonging 

 to the fox and the otter. 



These spoils were all enveloped in a sort of marl partly covered 

 by stalactites ; and the cavern, hollowed in a rock of calcareous 

 petrified shells, had a very narrow aperture ; so that this depot re- 

 sembled in every particular those discovered in such numbers in 

 Germany, and which we shall notice in detail in the fourth part of this 

 work. 



Professor Bucklaud read a paper to the Royal Society on this inte- 

 resting subject, a copy of which he has had the kindness to transmit 

 to me. I have extracted this notice from it, while waiting for an op- 

 portunity of turning it to more important account. Mr. Clift has added 

 to it some very finely executed drawings of the principal pieces ; and 

 but a very short time since, Mr. Salmouth forwarded to me a hand- 

 some collection of select specimens of the different species, so that I 

 am in possession of all the materials requisite for giving a correct 

 account of this remarkable depot *. 



In a former part of this volume I mentioned, on the authority of the 

 geological map of England, the discovery of some elephants' bones on 

 the coast of Kent, in a spot covered by the high tides. According to 

 the Kentish Gazette, some fresh discoveries have recently been made 



* This cavern, containing the bones of great pachydermes, intermixed with those of 

 small carnivorous animals, bears a strong analogy to that of Fovent, in the depart- 

 ment of the Haute Saone, which I mentioned in a former part of this volume. The 

 cave of Oreston, near Plymouth, presented a mixture of the same description. Besides 

 the bones of the rhinoceros discovered there in 1817, they have recently discovered, 

 in an adjoining cavern, the bones of bears and stags, which Mr. Whitby has sent to 

 the College of Surgeons in London. Sir Everard Home has given a catalogue of them 

 in the Philosophical Transactions of 1821. 



These admixtures, and those observed at Breugue and Pcelitz (see the chapter on 

 the fossil rhinoceros), form a phenomenon unique in its kind, deserving of the atten- 

 tion of geologists. We shall return to it in our fourth part. 



