The Ancient Fauna of Essex. 13
taken place in the physical as well as the climatic conditions
of this country to enable animals of such varied habits,
many of whom possess strong migratory instincts, to have
inhabited our Island. It seems absolutely necessary that
we must carry back the period at which these animals
lived, to a time when our Island was not separated from
the Continent, as it now is, but when the North Sea and
the Straits of Dover were all closed and formed one solid
stretch of land, passing from the Humber across to Heli-
goland and the coast of Denmark, and also from Norfolk
to Holland and from Dover to France. Then again, the
southern portions of our island must have been connected
with Brittany. It would only require an elevation of six
hundred feet to connect England with Ireland,—and someone
has said that it would be a very happy event if we were
so connected with Ireland now, because then the people
could not clamour, as they are doing, for separation.
The Rhine, the Meuse, and Moselle must have, at that time,
all flowed northward. But what is most interesting is, that
there are certain banks very well known to the fisherman,
where good dredging is done, and good trawling,— par-
ticularly the one known as the "Dogger Bank,"—which have
yielded, from the beginning of this century up to the present
time probably many thousand remains of the true Mamm th,
Elephas primigenius (fig. 6), the one which in past times spread
over the whole of Northern Europe, and whose remains have
been found so abundantly in the frozen mud-cliffs described
by Kotzebue; and also along the Lena, the Yenisei, and all the
Northern rivers which have their embouchure into the Arctic
Sea. The remains of these animals are no doubt spread
out over a vast extent of the floor of what is now the
North Sea, and the fishermen were in the habit of bringing
to Yarmouth, together with the fish, the remains of the
Mammoth which they had dredged up.10 Mr. J. J. Owles,
10 Mr. Samuel Woodward (Author of the 'Geology of Norfolk,' and
father of the writer) records that no fewer than 2000 Elephant-grinders
had been dredged up from the Oyster-bed off Happisburgh, Norfolk, by the
fishermen between 1820 and 1833. See also Falconer's 'Palaeontological
Memoirs'; 1868, vol. ii., p. 204.