The Geologist/Volume 5/Notes and Queries, Mammalian Remains

Mammalian Remains.—In the 'Philosophical Transactions' for 1715, vol. xxix., two teeth of Elephas, probably E. antiquus, are recorded to have been found in the north of Ireland, at Maghery, eight miles from Bulturbet, in digging the foundation of a mill near the side of a small brook that parts the counties of Cavan and Monaghan. They were about 4 feet underground, and about 80 yards from the brook. The bed on which they lay had been laid with ferns, and with that sort of rushes here called "sprits," with which brushes and nut-shells were intermixed. Under this was a stiff blue clay, on which teeth and bones were found. Above this was, first, a mixture of yellow clay; under that a fine white sandy clay, which was next to the bed. The bed was, for the most part, a foot thick, cutting like turf; and in every layer the seed of the rush was as fresh as if new pulled.

In the 'Philosophical Transactions' for 1754, vol. xlviii., there is a record of several bones of an elephant found at Leysdown, in the island of Sheppey, by Mr. Jacob, surgeon, of Faversham. Three or four years before, Mr. Jacob had sent the acetabulum of an elephant, which was discovered sticking in the clay which was partly washed away from the cliff, about a mile eastward of the cliffs of Minster. This, with other parts—vertebræ, a thigh-bone 4 feet long, too rotten to be taken up entire—all lay below high-water mark; and as the place soon after became his property by purchase, he then went, attended by some workmen, in search of more relics, and found a tusk 8 feet long and 12 inches in circumference in the middle, besides other bones within 20 feet of those first recorded.

 

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