Distribution of British Animals, 297 
most interesting kind. If ever other quadrupeds existed, and were 
extirpated by the chase, we may expect to find their relics in 
those very beds which have preserved to us the remains of such 
as history intimates to have been once indigenous. TL his circum- 
stance would constitute the connecting link between the known 
and the unknown, — the fabulous and heroic ages the transi- 
tion from the dint-pointed javelin and stone-hatchet, to the 
sword, the spear, and the musket. 
In the marl bogs of Ireland and England, as well as of several 
places on the Continent of Europe, the remains of a species of hAJc 
are found occasionally. This species is not known at present, 
in any country, in a recent state. It resembles somewhat the 
American elk, but seems possessed of characters intimating a 
specific difference *. 
A specimen of the horn of the fossil Rhinoceros , found in one 
of the marl pits at the loch of Forfar, ( Wern. Mem. vol. iv. 
p. 582.) exists at present in the Edinburgh Museum ; and we 
have been informed by Professor Jameson, that two other ex- 
amples have occurred in Blair-Drummond moss, on the banks 
of the Forth. Is is to be hoped that the skulls will yet be pro- 
cured. 
A Hippopotamus is likewise recorded by Lee, in his Natural 
History of Lancashire, as having been found under a peat-bog 
in that county. 
These animals, formerly inhabitants of this country, have 
their remains preserved, not only in peat -bogs and marl beds, 
(deposits which, from the commencement of their formation to 
the present time, have experienced no remarkable geological 
change, and indicate tire absence of any physical revolution 
which could occasion the death of the individuals now repre- 
sented by these bones), but likewise in the silt of our great ri- 
vers. In the valley of the Thames, for example, they occur 
in the regular stratified clay, sand, gravel, and peat. In Mr 
TrimmePs account of these remains, as they occur at Brentford, 
he enumerates the following animals, ( Phil . Trans. 1813, p.133.) : 
* A nearly complete and splendid specimen of the skeleton of this species is 
preserved in the College Museum of Edinburgh, of which a figure and description 
will be given in our next Number.— Edit. 
