6
scattered remnants on the Kentish North Downs near Lenham,
but better developed (or rather, less destroyed by denudation) in
North France and Belgium.
The innumerable sharks'-teeth, and the bones of marine
mammals, such as Cetacea, dolphins, &c, and of land animals
(pig, tapir, rhinoceros, mastodon, deer, horse, beaver, bear, tiger,
and hyaena), are all probably derived from the same source as
the box-stones, for some specimens (though none in this collec-
tion) have been found with the box-stone matrix still adhering to
them. It has been suggested, however, that some may be
derived from the yet older Miocene beds, present in Belgium, as
one of the box-stone fossils was found to be of still earlier,
Eocene, age, and amid the preponderance of Diestian remains,
there is a goodly proportion of fish and Crustacea from the
Eocene London-clay, which has also furnished the clay-basis of
the nodules.
These Eocene and Diestian fossils not being of the age of the
Crag shells associated with them, are exhibited separately, just
as the flint fossils found in our Glacial and Postglacial gravels are
placed with the fossils of the Chalk, from which they originally
came.
The exposures of Crag in Essex, although far from being
unimportant from a scientific point of view, are so scanty that
they may be described in detail, as follows:—
1. Furthest westwards, in a deep watercourse half-a-mile south
south-east of Thaxted church, is seen coarse iron-shot sand with
phosphatic nodules, amongst which a piece of phosphatised bone was
found; some larger nodules occur to the southward along the base of
the sand.
2. In a chalk-pit west of Burnt House, northwest of Stoke-by-
Clare, is a bed of rolled flint-pebbles, &c, in which a piece of
phosphatised bone was discovered, and also a mass of shells, mostly
Purpura lapillus, in the sand above the flint-bed.
3. Although Sudbury is outside of Essex, and the sections showing
Crag are on the Suffolk side of the Stour, they are included here, as
a guide to those who may seek for like evidence on the corresponding
Essex side, which being of similar geological structure, though less
favoured in respect of extensive artificial exposures, probably also con-
ceals remnants of the Crag in this district.
(a) In the Railway chalk-pit on the Cornard road, about 14 feet
above the chalk, there is gravel with phosphatic nodules, a foot thick,
under ten feet of brown ferruginous and yellow sand, probably also of
Crag age.