380 
THE GEOLOGIST. 
Yorkshire, below the boulder clay, there was found a quantity of flint and 
chalk gravel, which contained the bones of elephants, horses, and other 
creatures. Soon afterwards a similar discovery was made in Norfolk. 
Havino^ described these deposits, the Professor said he was inclined to 
think they must not venture to apply to this country any argument drawn 
from Scandinavia. Each country must be studied for itself, and it was 
better to take each class of glacial deposits separately. He thought it 
was possible to account for these deposits by the introduction of the tide 
at different levels, and that it was not at all necessary to suppose that the 
coast had been disturbed in order to account for the level of the marine 
shells. He was inclined to think that all those raammaliferous strata 
should be put together as the deposit of one period. 
Ox THE Alluvial Accumulations in the Valleys of the Somme 
ANp OusE. By Mr. E. A. Godwin-Austen. 
On the Discovery of Elephant and other Mammalian Remains 
IN Oxfoedshiee. By Mr. G. E. Roberts. — A considerable number of ele- 
phant and other mammalian bones have recently been met with in a cut- 
ting upon a new line of railway passing through Thame, in Oxfordshire. 
They were taken from a coarse rubbly gravel, mixed with stifi' clay, about 
13 feet from the surface. The section gives a surface-clay, lightish-yellow 
in colour and with a sandy bottom, 11 feet in thickness, lying upon gravel, 
the average thickness of which is 2 feet 6 inches, and which passes down- 
wards into a light coloured sand. About 10 feet down in the clay, a vase 
was found, of coarse earthenware, full of small bones, and just above the 
gravel another vase of coarse brown ware. The gravel extended linearly 
for 60 yards, and was slightly dome-shaped. Some of the bones have 
been submitted to Dr. Falconer, who has recognized ElejjJias primigenhis 
of the Siberian type, — teeth and other remains rather abundant ; Elephas 
antiquus ; a large species Bos { primi genius 1 or priscus ^), — top of ra- 
dius, tibia, and horn core ; many bones and teeth of Equus cahallus fos- 
silis, including a finely-preserved tibia of great size and a portion of 
another still larger ; and some good fragmentary specimens of the horns 
of Cervus elaphus. 
On the Hydrography of the St. Latveence and the Great Lakes. 
By Dr. Hulburt. — The effects of frosts and thaws during the Canadian 
winters are very remarkable on the rivers, smaller lakes, and bays of the 
great lakes in the valley of the St. Lawrence. One example may be 
given. In the winter of 1861 the writer very carefidly examined those 
eflfects upon Burlington Bay, at the head of Lake Ontario. The ice at the 
time was about 15 inches thick. Frequent thaws occur during the winter, 
at all of which the ice expands with the rise of temperature. With the 
return of the cold the ice again contracts, but the part which has been 
shoved upon the shore remains stationary, and the ice opens or cracks in 
parts over deep water. During twenty-four hours the ice had expanded 
6 feet over a distance of 2 miles, whilst it remained firm on the south side 
of the bay, carrying with it about 80 feet of a Avharf, which broke at the 
centre, wbilst some 80 feet nearer the shore remained firmly imbedded in 
the ice that had not yielded. Similar effects were produced in otlier places 
along the same shore. This expansion and contraction of tlie ice is sure 
to destroy all these bridges and wharves built upon piles and light spars in 
the lakes and rivers which freeze over ; for the larger lakes remain open 
during the winter, The boulders of primitive rocks which thickly strew 
the valley of the St. Lawrence are found, on one shore of the smaller 
lakes and rivers, to have been carried by the action of the ice far away 
from the water ; and whilst those boulders often occur so abundantly on 
