THE GEOLOGIST 



NOVEMBER, 1861. 



SOME BITS OF HORNS FROM FOLKESTONE. 

 By the Editor. 



Old bones, that would be worthless to anybody else, become valu- 

 able to the geologist. There may be nothing picturesque or strikingly 

 singular in their appearance. They may be too rotten or too fragile 

 for the manufacturer ; too sapless for the agriculturist ; nay, too few or 

 too far between to be of any commercial value at all. And yet bits 

 of bones may be inscriptions of much value to the palaeontologist. A s 

 everv letter in the few lines incised on the famous Rosetta stone was 

 a key to some passage in a forgotten language of the past, so every 

 new bit of bone may be the key to some passage in that greater history 

 of a greater past which geology unrolls. Many years ago — how time 

 flies past — I met with a little patch of mammaliferous drift at Folke- 

 stone ; I gathered everj^ fragment of bone, every tooth, every shell, 

 which the workmen's picks and spades exhumed, and most of what I 

 could not determine myself at that time, Professor Owen, and my 

 then living and active friend, Mr. Turner, looked over and named. 



Amongst the bones I then collected were two of form to me before 

 unknown, and which I often since brought back to mind. Two — 

 both fragments of horns — flat at the basal part, perfectly round 

 towards the tip ; no goat, nor antelope, nor deer, that I knew, had 

 horns like them ; and so those fragments were laid aside (not carelessly) 

 vol. iv. 3 E 



