THE ELEPHANT-BED OF CLACTON-ON-SEA. 35
submergence up to a level of between 30 and 40 feet O.D.,
after the previous high level of the land.
I did not succeed in confirming the estuarine character of
bed k, but found one thin line of shells and vegetable debris
intercalated in the middle of this barren hard clay, at a level of
about 16 or 17 feet O.D., which proved to be exclusively
fresh-water in origin.
The Mammalia.
The commonest remains belong to the following species :—
Cervus browni (closely related to C. dama, but larger), C. elaphus
(a rather small and lightly built variety), one or more species
of big deer or elk (less common), Bos primigenius (big and heavy),
Elephas antiquus, Rhinoceros megarhinus (=Rh. leptorhinus
of Cuvier), and Rh, hemitoechus (=Rh. leptorhinus of Owen),
These two forms of Rhinoceros are grouped together by many
continental authorities under one name, Rh. merckii.
Among the scarcer remains, the most interesting is a meta-
carpus of a diminutive form of Bos, which agrees in size with a
metatarsus found by Mr. A. Wrigley, at Temple Mills, near Strat-
ford, in the Low-level Pleistocene of the Lea Valley. It may
be the same species that was described by Owen under the name
of Bison minor.
I was fortunate in securing two lower jaws (of individuals
of different age) of E. antiquus with the molars in place, but the
unique specimen is a damaged lower jaw of a very young, prob-
ably unborn, individual, which unfortunately lacks the molars.
This has been described by Dr. C. W. Andrews, in my recent
paper on the Clacton bed,5 and he draws attention to the remark-
able development of the rostrum in front of the symphysis. This
is the survival of an ancestral character which disappears with
the early growth of the animal (Plate 6).
The development of the elephant's trunk appears to have
come about through the lengthening of a bony rostrum which
was at first even more marked in the lower, than in the upper
jaw. In Palaeomastodon of the Upper Eocene we see the length-
ening chin. In the earlier species of Tetrabelodon of the Lower
and Middle Miocene the chin attains its maximum length, and
this long rostrum was for the purpose of enabling the animal
5 op. cit.