BISHOP'S STORTFORD SUB-FOSSIL HORSE SKELETON. 283
it was photographed by Mr. H. G. Featberby, who, with his
engineering resources, found no difficulty in erecting a temporary
scaffold some 10 feet above it, from which he secured the
excellent photograph which was reproduced in the Illustrated
London News of 5th June 1909 ; (5) that all reference to the
Hipparion was gratuitous, since the idea was merely suggested
before the limb-bones were uncovered ; (6) that I was perfectly
aware that Pliocene beds had not been recognised by the
Survey in this part of the country, though it was impossible for
any one, with an acquaintance with the London Clay and the
Reading Beds such as I have gained from between 30 and 40
years of field-work in them, to recognise the deposit in which
the horse had been inhumed as belonging to either of those
formations, which (as I was well aware) had been long recognised
in the well-section at the town pumping station, only 350 yards
distant, and of which I will only say that doubts still linger in
my mind as to the true geological horizon of at least one sub-
formation included in that section, there being no fossil evidence
to hand.
The skeleton was left lying at the bottom of the pond for
several weeks, during which it was infamously damaged,
although fortunately not until after Mr. Featherby had secured
his excellent photograph, which has thus acquired a permanent
value. On further examination of the hill-slope, and of the
evident erosive action of a powerful high-level spring which
must have been flowing from the drift-cap of the hill ever since
glacial times, one was soon led to the conclusion that the pond
excavation had not touched the London Clay behind the
remanie material which the land-slides of the hill had brought
down from higher levels, with mammalian bones, human
artefacts, and a variety of stones from the drift-cap of the hill
above, some of them undoubtedly "erratics." This conclusion
was arrived at after the day's labour which was given to the
removal of the entire skeleton, the bones of which were as black
as those recovered this year from the bottom of the peaty
alluvium of the Stort Valley. It was soon seen that the
deposit in which the skeleton was found (utterly devoid of all
trace of anything that could be associated with a modern horse)
falls into line with the post-glacial "rubble-drift" series of
deposits, which Prestwich, with his characteristic thoroughness,