8 
The Ancient Fauna of Essex. 
The Gigantic Ox (Bos primigenius) is quite extinct as a 
species. The Reindeer and the Elk, though killed off in this 
country, still survive in Norway, Siberia, and in North 
America. 
The Beaver, once common in many parts of England, 
Scotland, and Wales, as is proved by its fossil remains in our 
peat deposits, has also given its name to many places, as 
“Beverley,” in Yorkshire; “ Llyn-yr-afangef or the Beaver’s 
Lake ; “ Eant-yr-afancwm ,” or the Yale of the Beavers ; &c. 
It was very abundant at Walthamstow, and elsewhere in 
Essex and Cambridgeshire. 6 
The only European Beavers now met with are said to 
inhabit the lowlands near the mouths of the Danube and 
Volga; and in some of the rivers which take their rise in the 
Ural Mountains. Its antiquity is proved not only by its wide 
geographical range through Europe and North America,—as 
far as Vancouver’s Island ; but also from the fact that both 
in America and in this country it was represented at an 
earlier period by a gigantic predecessor, the Trogontherium 
cuvieri from the Norfolk Forest Bed, and the Castoroides 
ohioticus from Ohio, U.S.A. 
I should like to say a few words with regard to the Beaver. 
The Beaver was found in considerable numbers at Waltham¬ 
stow, and equally so through the Fen-land of Cambridge, at 
Copford in Essex, and in fact all through our Eastern counties. 
There can be no doubt, I think, from an examination of the 
peat-deposit and the large quantity of trees not connected 
with stumps, that the Beaver must have lived here for a very 
long time ; and wherever the Beaver lived, there it is sure to 
have constructed dams. I believe that the Beaver had been 
in this district, as he is now in America, an important geo¬ 
logical agent. His work, while producing enjoyment to 
himself, is eminently destructive to the district which he 
G Some account of tlie European Beaver will be found in Owen’s 
‘ British Fossil Mammals and Birds,’ 8vo, 1846, pp. 190—200; and 
Harting’s ‘ Extinct British Animals,’ 8vo, 1880, pp. 38—60. The 
Trogontherium is described by Owen, Brit. Foss. Mamm., pp. 185—189; 
and Geol. Mag., 1869, vol. vi., pp. 49—56. See also Dr. H. Woodward, 
Geol. Mag., 1869, vol. vi., pp. 69 and 388. 
