A Day's Elephant Hunting in Essex. 39
Bison, or Auroch .. .. .. .. Bison prisma.
Urus.. .. .. .. .. .. Bos primigenius.
Brown Bear .. .. .. .. Ursus arctos.
Grisly Bear.. .. .. .. .. Ursus ferox.
Wolf.. .. .. .... .. Canis lupus.
Fox .. .. .. .. .. .. Canis vulpes.
Lion.. .. .. .. .. .. Felis leo.
Beaver .. .. .. .. .. Castor fiber.
Water-rat .. .. .. .. .. Arvicola amphibia.
Such is the catalogue of animals which have been
disinterred during a series of years from these ancient
graves at Ilford. What startling questions they raise !
What was the climate and what were the surroundings of
this their native land—of these now strangely altered
landscapes of Essex and South Eastern England, where
the hills and vales are now vocal with domestic sheep and
oxen, and where only the badger, the beaver, and the otter
are left as the largest of the fera naturae of these
bygone times ?
Some of the species found fossil at Ilford still inhabit
these islands; others, like the brown bear and the wolf,
have lived here in historic times; the fossil bison or auroch
of the Essex and Middlesex prairie is hardly distinguishable
from the American buffalo of to-day. But what of the
stranger forms which figure on the list? What of the
northern fleece-clad elephant, the woolly rhinoceros, now
vanished from the earth; what of the hippopotamus, the
southern elephant, and the lion, which are shown to us
to-day only as the captive exotics of the menagerie? How
shall we assign to animals of such opposite regions and
climes a common area of habitation? Did these creatures
really roam wild in natal landscapes in this valley of the
Thames? Did they live, move, and have their being amid
scenes as orderly as the cosmos of to-day, or shall we
assign them, as was done by their earlier discoverers, to a
world of confusion and chaos, to the shadowy and horrific
Kingdom of Diluvia and Catastrophe?
Our first task, then, is this : To find in the Essex of
to-day some traces of former climatal and geographical
conditions under which these animals could have lived.