36 ARCTIC FAUNA AND FLORA AT PONDERS END.
NOTES ON THE FAUNA AND FLORA OF
THE SO-CALLED "ARCTIC-BED" OF THE
VALLEY OF THE LEA, AT PONDERS END.
AT the meeting of the Club on November 11th 1911, Mr. S.
Hazzledine Warren, F.G.S., referred to the discovery
of fossil Arctic mosses in the Valley of the River Lea. The
speaker said that in the large ballast pit belonging to the Great
Eastern Railway Company at Ponders End, and also in another
large excavation near Angel Road station, he had discovered the
presence of a plant-bearing deposit. This is embedded in the
Low Level River Drift Gravel, which passes under the Holocene
Alluvium of the Lea valley. Associated with this plant-bearing
bed are found remains of Elephas primigenius, Rhinoceros
antiquitatis (=R. tichorhinus) and other mammalia. The
Stratigraphical evidence shows that the deposit belongs to the
close of the Pleistocene period, and is later than the epoch of
River-Drift man.
The flowering plants, which have been determined by Mr.
Francis J. Lewis, include amongst many others Betula nana,
Salix herbacea, and Potentilla sibbaldi. These three species
are exclusively Arctic in habitat, while all the remainder that
are associated with them have a high Northern range, and are
found living under the same conditions as the foregoing. Land
and freshwater mollusca are also abundant. These have been
determined by Messrs. A. S. Kennard and B. B. Woodward, who