THE ELEPHANT EPOCH. 
349 
communication with the ocean was cut off; for 
neither tlie bones, nor the materials of wliicli the 
bed is composed, appear to have suffered from 
attrition, nor is there any intermixture of marine 
exuvim. These deposits were evidently of consi- 
derable extent : there are outlying patches on the 
chalk along the coasts of Sussex and Kent, and 
also at Etables, and other ])oints on the opposite 
shores of France. Similar beds occur on the 
banks of the Loire, and probably the same series 
is represented by the Crag, overlying the London 
Clay, on the eastern shores of England ; facts 
which tend to j)rove that the estuary once ex- 
tended over a considerable portion of the area now 
occupied by the British Channel.* The geological 
relations of this group of deposits are as yet but 
iinj)erfectly known. The zoological characters 
which distinguish them from the older tertiary 
strata, are the absence of the palcpotheria, and the 
occurrence of the remains of the mammoth, rhino- 
ceros, and other mammalia, whose bones are so 
constantly found in the superficial gravel of Europe, 
intermixed with those of recent species. 
To this epoch we may probably refer the exist- 
ence of hyenas, tigers, and other carniv'orous 
animals, whose skeletons are entombed in such im- 
mense numbers in caverns, and fissures, and in beds 
of superficial gravel, in various parts of England, 
• Mr. Samuel Woodward, of Norwich, the author of the “ Synoptical 
Table of British Organic Remains ” (a work indispensable to the prac- 
tical geologist), states, that in the crag on the coast of Norfolk, the 
remains of Mammoths are so abundant, that on the oyster-ground off 
Harborough, the grinders of these animals which have been found 
must have belonged to upwards of 500 individuals. 
