8
The Ancient Fauna of Essex.
The Gigantic Ox (Bos primigenius) is quite extinct as a
species. The Reindeer and the Elk, though killed off in this
country, still survive in Norway, Siberia, and in North
America.
The Beaver, once common in many parts of England,
Scotland, and Wales, as is proved by its fossil remains in our
peat deposits, has also given its name to many places, as
"Beverley," in Yorkshire; "Llyn-yr-afange,'' or the Beaver's
Lake; "Nant-yr-afanewm," or the Vale of the Beavers ; &c.
It was very abundant at Walthamstow, and elsewhere in
Essex and Cambridgeshire.6
The only European Beavers now met with are said to
inhabit the lowlands near the mouths of the Danube and
Volga; and in some of the rivers which take their rise in the
Ural Mountains. Its antiquity is proved not only by its wide
geographical range through Europe and North America,—as
far as Vancouver's Island ; but also from the fact that both
in America and in this country it was represented at an
earlier period by a gigantic predecessor, the Trogontherium
cuvieri from the Norfolk Forest Bed, and the Castoroides
ohioticus from Ohio, U.S.A.
I should like to say a few words with regard to the Beaver.
The Beaver was found in considerable numbers at Waltham-
stow, and equally so through the Fen-land of Cambridge, at
Copford in Essex, and in fact all through our Eastern counties.
There can be no doubt, I think, from an examination of the
peat-deposit and the large quantity of trees not connected
with stumps, that the Beaver must have lived here for a very
long time ; and wherever the Beaver lived, there it is sure to
have constructed dams. I believe that the Beaver had been
in this district, as he is now in America, an important geo-
logical agent. His work, while producing enjoyment to
himself, is eminently destructive to the district which he
6 Some account of the European Beaver will be found in Owen's
'British Fossil Mammals and Birds,' 8vo, 1846, pp. 190—200; and
Harting's 'Extinct British Animals,' 8vo, 1880, pp. 33—60. The
Trogontherium is described by Owen, Brit. Foss. Mamm., pp. 185—189;
and Geol. Mag., 1869, vol. vi., pp. 49—56. See also Dr. H. Woodward,
Geol. Mag., 1869, vol. vi., pp. 69 and 388,