^'OTES AND QUEEIES. 
427 
in the Antiquities Department of the British Museum, by Mr. Franks, 
■w hich were derived from the bed of the Thames, at Battersca. I have 
not yet been able to give them tlie attention which they merit, but shall 
compare them with the East Ham, Kellet, and Leicester skulls, which 
they resemble more than they do the Sennen, Borris, Blackwater, Musk- 
ham, etc., series of true " river-bed " skulls. 
I trust that all further evidences of human bones or works that may 
occur in or near London will be carefully recorded, and that above all, 
whenever there are geological evidences of antiquity such evidences may 
be thorouglil}^ sifted and properly recorded in the same careful manner as 
was done in the case of the Heathery Burn relics, under the effective 
direction of the editor of this journal. — Chakles Caktek Blake. 
Vegetable Kemaixs at BouEXEiiouTH. — Sir, — Making inquiries to- 
day of a labouring man employed in a gravel-pit, as to whether he had 
ever met with animal remains in the gravel, or shells below it, he gave 
the following as the only instance of the sort within his own knowledge :— 
About eight years ago, whilst working in a pit for white clay, which is 
sent to Staffordshire, at a place about one mile on the Poole side of Bourne- 
mouth, in Dorsetshire, at fort3--two feet below tlie surface we came upon an 
oak-tree two feet in diameter. At first it seemed liard, but on exposure to 
the air it could be broken awa}^ with the nail ; the leaves were there in the 
clay, entire, but we could not succeed in removing any of them : they all 
came to pieces ; although we tried every means to do so, placing them 
between the leaves of books, as some of the ladies there wished to have 
them." 
Further inquiry on the spot, by any one who had the opportunity, 
might be interesting, if the case has not already been recorded. 
I am, vour obedient Servant, 
Soidhampfon, October 1st, 1862. ' W. IS". 
Fossil Monkey in the Miocene. — The following announcement is 
made in Professor Owen's recently published memoir, " On the Osteology 
of the Chimpanzees and Orangs," in the Zoological Society's Transactions, 
page 18 : — 
" I have been favoured by Dr. Kaup with the cast of a fossil femur 
from the Eppelsheim miocene, near Darmstadt, and with the request that 
1 Avould compare it with the femora of the large antliropoid apes in our 
metropolitan museums. This femur is 11 iiiclies 3 lines in length, is 
2 inches across the proximal, and 1 inch 7 lines across the distal end ; and 
measures 2 inches 4 lines in circumference. It retains all the lower qua- 
drumanal characters of tlie bone, with nearly the gibbon-like proportions 
as to length and slenderness. The shaft is straight, without the least for- 
ward bend ; the distal end becomes graduallj^ and almost symmetrically 
expanded, and in an inferior degree to that in the chimpanzee, gorilla, and 
man ; the backward projection of the condyles is much less. The linea 
aspera is as little marked as in the gibbons ; the neck of the thigh-bone 
is as short, and the head as small, relatively, as in the gibbons ; all the 
modifications, in fact, relating to tlie use of tlie lower limb in maintaining 
the erect position, and which, in their respective degrees, are found in the 
chimpanzee and gorilla, marking their progressive approaches to the pecu- 
liar human attitude, are as completel}^ wanting in the fossil femur as in that 
of the recent ungkas and gibbons ; whence we may infer that during the 
miocene period there existed, in the locality haunted by the ape that has 
left its remains at Eppelsheim, a richly wooded tract, in which a gibbon, 
or long-armed ape, of twice the size of those of the Eastern Indian Archi- 
pelago, enjoyed a strictly arboreal life. The shape of the skaft of the 
