36 
ARCTIC FAUNA AND FLORA AT PONDERS END. 
Albuminoid organic matter yielding 10% of Nitrogen (equal to 
ammonia per million o'oq nearly) .. 
Nitrites .. •• •• •• •• •• •• • • 
Nitrates containing 17% of Nitrogen (equal to grains of Nitrogen 
per gallon o o) •• •• •• •• •• •• •• 
Chlorides containing 60% of Chlorine (equal to grains of Chlorine 
per gallon 4*2) 
Hardness reckoned as Chalk grains or “ degrees 
Removed by ebullition .. .. 14 ^ jg 
Unaffected ,, „ .. 4 > 
Lead or Copper 
Physical examination satisfactory 
Oxygen absorbed in 3 hours 
0*02 
none 
none 
7 
18 
none 
0-03 
(Signed) Professor Attfield, F.R.S., nth January 1889. 
NOTES ON THE FAUNA AND FLORA OF 
THE SO-CALLED “ARCTIC-BED” OF THE 
VALLEY OF THE LEA, AT PONDERS END. 
A T the meeting of the Club on November nth 1911, Mr. S. 
Hazzledine Warren, F.G.S., referred to the discovery 
of fossil Arctic mosses in the Valley of the River Lea. The 
speaker said that in the large ballast pit belonging to the Great 
Eastern Railway Company at Ponders End, and also in another 
large excavation near Angel Road station, he had discovered the 
presence of a plant-bearing deposit. This is embedded in the 
Low Level River Drift Gravel, which passes under the Holocene 
Alluvium of the Lea valley. Associated with this plant-bearing 
bed are found remains of Elephas primigenius, Rhinoceros 
antiquitatis (-R. tichorhinus) and other mammalia. The 
stratigraphical evidence shows that the deposit belongs to the 
close of the Pleistocene period, and is later than the epoch of 
River-Drift man. 
The flowering plants, which have been determined by Mr. 
Francis J. Lewis, include amongst many others Betula nana, 
Salix herbacea, and Potentilla sibbaldi. These three species 
are exclusively Arctic in habitat, while all the remainder that 
are associated with them have a high Northern range, and are 
found living under the same conditions as the foregoing. Land 
and freshwater mollusca are also abundant. These have been 
determined by Messrs. A. S. Kennard and B. B. Woodward, who 
