PALAEONTOLOGY task of drawing up a list of the fossil vertebrates of Leicester- shire, at least so far as known up to the year 1889, is rendered easy by Mr. Montagu Browne's excellent account of the Vertebrate Animals of Leicestershire and Rutland. The writer is further indebted to Mr. Browne, who formerly had charge of the Town Museum at Leicester, for information with regard to additions to the fossil vertebrate fauna of the county since the date of publication of that work. Commencing with the mammals of the superficial formations, it may be noted that all these belong to the ordinary species, and are consequently in the main of no special interest or importance. An exception in this respect has, however, to be made with regard to two specimens of elephants a skull and a skeleton noticed below, of which unfortunately only fragments were saved. Among the species most numerously represented in the county is the mammoth or extinct Siberian elephant (Elepba s primigenius] , a near relative of the existing Asiatic elephant (. maximus], but distinguished by the narrower and more numerous vertical plates of the molar teeth, as well as by the thick and abundant coat of bristly hair and woolly under-fur which clothed the skin. A molar of this species was discovered in the valley of the Soar in 1849, and a tusk in a gravel-pit at Belgrave about 1861 ; while a remarkably fine tusk, originally measuring 1 1 ft. in length, was disinterred in the autumn of 1 86 1 in the gravel of Sydney Street, Belgrave Road, Leicester. A portion of this tusk, as well as the two preceding specimens, is preserved in the Leicester Museum, which also possesses part of a larger but more slender tusk, apparently dug up in Sydney Street in 1867. In 1874 the Leicester Museum received portions of a mammoth molar from a pit by the side of the Midland Railway near Thurmaston, from which large quantities of gravel were dug for ballast. According to information obtained on the spot by Mr. W. J. Harrison, it appears probable that the workmen dug up a whole skull of this mammoth, which, with the exception of the aforesaid molar, was broken up and carted away in a ballast-truck. 1 Such a piece of vandalism is a matter for much regret. Mammoth teeth are also recorded from Keyworth and Kettering ; while a well-preserved specimen was dug up in Wood Street, Belgrave Road, Leicester, in 1883, and examples have been obtained from the Abbey Meadow, near Leicester, and from other localities in the valley of the Soar. In excavating for a gasometer at Loughborough in 1888 a mammoth molar was discovered, and there are several other records of such finds in the county. Special mention must be made of a fine last upper molar from Kirby Park, Melton Mowbray, preserved in the Sedgwick (Woodwardian) Museum at Cambridge, on account of its being described 1 Browne, op. cit. 27.
