ON A TOOTH OF THE LOPHIODON. 



67 



of one hundred and fifteen feet, the hghter sandy soil which 

 came up was supposed to indicate the proximity of water, but 

 after boring through a conglomerate of broken shells, about 

 eighteen inches thick, these indications disappeared, till it 

 was carried to the depth of about two hundred and forty feet, 

 where a fine spring was reached in the black gravel and sand. 



This black gravel stratum is supposed by some of our 

 well-sinkers to be the reservoir of the medicinal waters so 

 common in the neighbourhood, and is said to extend in a cir- 

 cuitous band about half a mile in width, from Streatham to 

 the river Thames. 



In this shelly conglomerate was found the tooth of a thick- 

 skinned animal belonging to the extinct genus Lophiodon, the 

 first that has been discovered in the London basin, though 

 it has before produced a solitary specimen of one of the 

 smaller pachyderms from the neighbourhood of Herne-bay. 



The tooth was some time since submitted to the inspec- 

 tion of Dr. G. A. Mantell, who pronounced it to be the 

 canine of some pachydermatous animal ; adding, " it is a 

 very fine specimen of its kind, and I believe has not been 

 found in the London clay before." Dr. Buckland says, it 

 is certainly new, and extremely interesting." 



It has since been subjected to a more rigid examinatioik 

 by Richard Owen, Esq. of the Royal College of Surgeons, 

 who describes it to be an inferior canine of the Lophiodon, 

 one of the extinct genera allied to the tapir, which occur in 

 the Eocene strata near Orleans, Buchsweiler, and other 

 parts of the Continent." 



The tooth, discovered on Sydenham-common, resembles, 

 both in form and size, the upper part of a man's finger, as 

 far as the second joint; the root of the tooth being slightly 

 curved and tapering. Its extreme length, measuring round 

 the curve, and over the face of the tooth, is two inches, 

 rseven-eighths : its circumference at the butt of the root, two 



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