16
THE ESSEX NATURALIST
and Rhinoceros leptorhinus. From the peat, which he (Fisher)
described as containing "an amazing number of fragments of
Beetles in a remarkable state of preservation", he collected a
number of the insect remains and submitted them to T. V.
Wollaston. The latter provided a list of somewhat indefinite
identifications, accompanied by two less vague statements. The
first of these was that "none of those few species, the portions of
which I have yet examined, are specifically identical with any of
the existing British forms, unless indeed it be No. 1". Fisher
obviously was not entirely happy about this pronouncement.
Wollaston's second opinion, based chiefly upon an identification of
a specimen as Cossyphus and the "gorgeously cyaneous" metallic
blue of an alleged Curculio, was that the insect fauna indicated a
warmer climate that present-day Essex and was to be compared
with the Mediterranean. As a consequence of this statement,
Lexden has been quoted as an example of a "Lusitanian" fauna,
despite the apparent contradiction furnished by the presence of
the mammoth.
Fortunately, it has been possible to re-examine Fisher's
original material. Teeth are preserved in both the British Museum
and the Geological Survey Museum, and in the latter are also
Wollaston's named beetles (though some are lost), other unidenti-
fied fragments and small pieces of dried detritus peat which can be
split and examined for insect and plant fragments. From the
peat and from the material in the interstices of an elephant tooth,
pollen preparations have been made. It is thus possible to re-
assess the fauna and report on the flora for the first time and,
as will be seen, materially to alter the picture which the original
paper presented.
Plant remains from Lexden (R.G.W.)
Analyses of plant remains. Two samples were analysed for
pollen, one from the crevices of an elephant tooth, b.m. (n.h.),
No. 36427a, from the bone horizon and one from a peat fragment
(a coarse detritus mud with many monocotyledonous fragments)
from the box containing Wollaston's insect remains in the
Geological Survey Museum. The pollen analyses are given in
Table 1. Macroscopic plant remains isolated from the peat during
the search for beetle remains were as follows: —
Stellaria graminea L............. 1 seed
Carex rostrata Stokes ......... 9 nuts with utricles
Carex spp......................... 60 nuts
Indications of vegetation. The two pollen analyses are similar.
Non-tree pollen (NAP) is dominant. Of the tree pollen (AP) only
Pinus is represented in any frequency. Betula (4 grains) and
Picea (2 grains) were the only other trees represented by more
than one pollen grain. Pinus commonly occurs as the most fre-
quent AP type in sediments containing much NAP, and from a
number of studies of recent pollen rain it appears that such