97
PRIMITIVE MAMMALS IN THE LONDON CLAY
OF HARWICH.
(Being a Presidential Address delivered to the Club at the Annual
Meeting on 28th March, 1925.)
By SIR ARTHUR SMITH WOODWARD, LL.D., F.R.S., Etc.
(With One Plate and one Text Figure.)
PALEONTOLOGISTS are following with satisfaction the
renewed efforts now being made to collect and study the
fossils of the London Clay. The recent researches of Messrs.
Arthur Wrigley, S. W. Wooldridge, A. G. Davis and others are
not only of value to Stratigraphical geology but also of impor-
tance in the investigation of Lower Eocene life. The collection
of fish-remains made by Mr. Hazzledine Warren in the London
Clay of Frinton, and presented by him to the British Museum,
shows that there is still hope of extending our knowledge of the
Lower Eocene fishes from other localities than the old classic
cliffs of Sheppey. The Chelonian remains formerly obtained
from the Septarian nodules at Harwich when they were worked
for cement, point to a source of fossil vertebrates which is well
worthy of repeated examination. As is well known, indeed,
the London Clay was deposited sufficiently near to the mouth
of a river to receive occasional fragments of the skeletons of
mammals and birds from the land, and of these enough specimens
have been found to demonstrate their extreme interest to students
of the life of the past.
It is now nearly seventy years since the discovery of any
mammalian fossil in the London Clay of Essex, but in 1845 and
1857 two specimens of fundamental importance were found near
Harwich. Still earlier, fragments of mammalian jaws and
teeth were collected by Mr. William Colchester1 at Kyson,
near Woodbridge, Suffolk, in the sandy and pebbly basement
bed of the London Clay, which has also been observed in some
parts of Essex. I wish to refer to the significance of these
discoveries, and to urge that renewed attention be paid to
exposures of the deposits which have already yielded such
interesting material.
1 Mag. Nat. Hist., 1839, p. 446. See also descriptions of fossils by R. Owen, A History of
British Fossil Mammals and Birds, 1846.
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