THE LIBRARY TABLE. 243
In the chapters on "The Evolution of Live-stock" some curious facts
about sheep are mentioned. At a place in Derbyshire a "fault" separated a
limestone area from one in which silicious grit formed the surface, The
sheep were all of one breed. But while those which fed on the lime-stone
were healthier and made better mutton, those which fed on the sandstone had
superior wool. Bakewell, it appears, classed wool soils thus :—Clay, the
best; sand next; lastly lime. But we are also reminded of "the effect of clay
formations—as the Oxford Clay—in developing such diseases as liver-fluke
and foot-rot."
It seems to me, however, worth suggesting that possibly much of the ill-
health of sheep on clay may be due to bad water supply.
But it is impossible, in the space available in the Essex Naturalist, to
discuss adequately a book which covers so large a field as this, and is the
result of so many years' hard work, both in the library and on the farm. It is
a pleasure to be able to congratulate the author on the success of his labours,
and to recommend his book to all who are interested in Agricultural Geology.
T. V. H.
The Giant Beaver (Trogonthrtium) in the Thames Valley.—In the
Geological Magazine for September (1902) there is a short paper by Mr. E.
T. Newton, F.R.S., F.G.S., on "The Giant Beaver (Trogontherium) from the
Thames Valley." Mr. Newton remarks that English specimens of
Trogontherium have been chiefly obtained from the 'Cromer Forest Bed,'
"that rich and remarkable series of beds occupying a position in time,
between the Crags and the Glacial deposits of East Anglia." A few
specimens have, however, been found in the Norwich and Weybourn Crags
Now a lower incisor tooth of Trogontherium cuvieri has been met with in a bed
of gravel (at 78 feet O.D.) an old Thames Valley deposit, near Greenhithe,
Kent, together with remains of Elephas antiquus. E, primigenius. Rhinoceros,
leptorhinus, Bos primigenius, etc., and many Palaeolithic implements. The
implements have been figured and described by Mr W. M. Newton in Man
for June, 1901.—T. V. H.
The Matrix of the Suffolk Chalky Boulder-clay.—A paper on this
subject, by the Rev. Edwin Hill, M.A., F.G.S., appears in the Quarterly
Journal, Geological Soc. (vol. lxviii., pp. 179-182. It need hardly be remarked
that the Suffolk Boulder Clay is also that of Norfolk and Essex, though it
covers a larger proportion of Suffolk than of the counties due north and south.
Indeed, some of the specimens examined were from the neighbourhood of
Bishop Stortford, and one from Finchley in Middlesex, others came from
Boston, Lincolnshire, though most were from Suffolk. Mr. Hill remarks that
the materials of the matrix do not appear to have come from the east, but
from the west or north-west, and that they were drawn from a limited belt
lying on one side of the basin which the Boulder Clay occupies.—T. V. H.