CRADLEY PTERASPIDES. 
, — HUMAN REMAINS. 
495 
CUADLEY PTERASPIDES. 
Dear Sir, — On the part of Mr. Roberts I must be thankful, I suppose, for the 
concession extracted from Mr. E. R. Lankester, whose "eve?'?/" has now duninished 
into ''most," and whose "most,''' after another month's recollection, will probably 
shrink into "a vanishing quantity." 
At the earliest opportunity I shall submit the fish in question to the examination 
of Sir P. M. De Grey Egei'ton ; meanwhile let it pass as P. rostratus. This note 
will therefore close the subject. With many thanks for the kindness and courtesy 
of the Editor, 
Yours, &c,, 
Mall-j:us. 
HUMAN REMAINS IN THE VALLEY OF THE TRENT. 
To the Editor of the Geologist. 
Sir, — It was my intention to abstain from offering any opinion upon these 
"remains," until Dr. Bevor, of Newark, had recovered them and given me an 
opportunity for their inspection ; but the letter of J. H. W. in your last number 
induces me to offer a few remarks. 
The first account of these remains came from a mutual friend of myself and Mr. 
F. Drake, residing in the Vale of Belvoir, and from some want of detail in the 
communication, it was supposed they were found in the "Vale,' but on a visit 
we found the true state of the matter, that they were found in an excavation made 
for the foundation of a bridge built by the Great Northern Railway at Muskham, 
a village about two miles from Newark. We visited the spot, and made notes from 
Mr. Chowler's very clear and detailed account of the excavation, with which he was 
familiar from its commencement to its termination, it being upon his farm. Most 
unfortunately, in geologizing recently at Aust Cliff, on the banks of the Severn, I 
lost my pocket-book containing these notes, but the details are yet so fresh in my 
mind that I can recal them without difficulty. 
The excavation, although surrounded on all sides by a very pure gravel of an 
ochreous character, such as is common to the Trent valley, was not made in a 
gravel, but in a succession of soft, unctuous, alluvial deposits, sometimes sandy and 
pebbly, butall dark coloured, and so soft that a stick could be thrust into them with 
ease ; the beds were so distinct as to give the appearance of being deposited at 
different times ; at least, the impression produced was that the materials were not all 
poured in together. It was at the bottom of tliese beds, and before penetrating 
into the gravel beneath, that the remains were found : the conclusion I came to was, 
that originally there had been a deep hollow or pit, either natural or artificial, which 
had been filled up with river-silt by a succession of overflows of the Trent ; such 
depressions in the Trent valley are common enough. I saw one opened in con- 
tinuing the Great Northern line to Nottingham ; it was filled with a soft, black, 
tenacious, peaty mud. 
The character of the remains is somewhat against their being found in a ** drift" 
gravel ; elephant remains are common enough in the "drift" of the Soar valley,* 
and they may easily have been brought into the Trent by floods washing them out 
of the banks of the Soar, flowing as it does for many miles through beds of this 
"drift gravel ;" and at the junction at Red Hill these would be poured into the 
Trent stream, and mingling with modem remains, would be swept into these hollows 
in the valley at the time of any great flood. This would account for the pottery, a 
* Geologist, vol. ii. p. 174. 
