of freshwater shells throughout the series†. It is the ferruginous " pan " lying at the base of this series, which is so rich in mammalian remains, and is known as the Elephant-bed. It is, however, clear that the Westleton beds often repose upon a much denuded surface of the underlying beds, the debris of which they then contain. Therefore how far the bones found in the Elephant-bed may be proper to it, or how many have been derived from the Forest-bed, is uncertain, as it has not always been possible to keep the fossils of the two beds distinct, nor is it always practicable to distinguish the proper from the extraneous fossils‡.
A large number of these mammalian remains were collected by Miss Gurney ; and Mr. Gunn's magnificent collection, which he has also lately presented to the Norwich Museum, is known to all geologists. Dr. Falconer, who studied them with so much zeal, has left a number of interesting notices respecting the more important specimens, in those memoirs in which he investigates the characters of the Proboscidia§.
Mr. Gunn, in his excellent concise account of the Forest-bed, in which he includes the Elephant-bed as an upper division, gives the following list of mammalian remains ||, chiefly on the authority of Dr. Falconer, to which Mr. Boyd Dawkins has obligingly added the species marked with an asterisk.
Elephas antiquus. Cervus megaceros.
— —, var. priscus. — elaphus.
— nieridionalis. — Sedgwickii.
Rhinoceros megarhinus. — Poligniacus.
— etruscus. — capreolus ?
Hippopotamus major. *— ardeus.
Equus (*caballus). Trogontherium Cuvieri.
Machairodus? Mygale moschata.
Bison priscus ? Sorex fodiens.
Bos (*primigenius). — remifer.
Sus (*arvernensis). Arvicola amphibia.
Ursus arvernensis. Castor europaeus.
- — spelasus ? Two species of whale.
- — etruscus ? [Vertebrae of fish.]
† Mr. Gunn has also pointed out to me a spot, just under Mundesley, where a pebble bed, with Littorina, Mytilus, &c., just as at Bacton, occurs, and a little to the north the Pinna pectinata is found.
‡ A large proportion of the fossils have been collected from the shore after storms, when they had been washed out of the cliffs ; and many have been dredged out at sea. Those which are derived from the elephant-bed. frequently have a portion of the gravel cemented to them, which may show that they are not derived (directly, at all events) from the forest-bed; but I would observe that the " pan" at the base of the Crag, and immediately lying on the Chalk, presents lithological characters not to be distinguished in detached portions from the other ; and as I have found bones in this crag-bed at Sherringham, this bed may, although not so rich as at Norwich, have supplied a portion of the re- mains found on the shore.
§ ' Palaeontological Memoirs and Notes,' edited by Charles Murchison, M.D., 1868, vol. ii.
|| Mr. Gunn considers that there is evidence of several other species of Deer, and two more varieties of Elephant, in the Forest-bed.
