(* "Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society" volume 12
1856 page 124.)
I have already alluded to the recent discovery of this same ox near Chauny, in the valley of the Oise, in France; and in 1856 I found a skull of it preserved in the museum at Berlin, which Professor Quenstedt, the curator, had correctly named so long ago as 1836, when the fossil was dug out of drift, in the hill called the Kreuzberg, in the southern suburbs of that city. By an account published at the time, we find that the mammalia which accompanied the musk ox were the mammoth and tichorhine rhinoceros, with the horse and ox;* but I can find no record of the occurrence of a hippopotamus, nor of Elephas antiquus or Rhinoceros leptorhinus, in the drift of the north of Germany, bordering the Baltic.
(* "Leonhard and Bronn's Jahrbuch" 1836 page 215.)
On the other hand, in another locality in the same drift of North Germany, Dr. Hensel, of Berlin, detected, near Quedlinburg, the Norwegian Lemming (Myodes lemmus), and another species of the same family called by Pallas Myodes torquatus (by Hensel, Misothermus torquatus)—a still more arctic quadruped, found by Parry in latitude 82 degrees, and which never strays farther south than the northern borders of the woody region. Professor Beyrich also informs me that the remains of the Rhinoceros tichorhinus were obtained at the same place.*
(* "Zeitschrift der Deutschen Geologischen Gesellschaft"
volume 7 1855 page 497 etc.)
As an example of what may possibly have constituted a more southern fauna in the valley of the Thames, I may allude to the fossil remains found in the fluviatile alluvium of Gray's Thurrock, in Essex, situated on the left bank of the river, 21 miles below London. The strata of brick-earth, loam, and gravel exposed to view in artificial excavations in that spot, are precisely such as would be formed by the silting up of an old river channel. Among the mammalia are Elephas antiquus, Rhinoceros leptorhinus (R. megarhinus, Christol), Hippopotamus major, species of horse, bear, ox, stag, etc., and, among the accompanying shells, Cyrena fluminalis, which is extremely abundant, instead of being scarce, as at Abbeville. It is associated with Unio littoralis also in great numbers and with both valves united. This conspicuous freshwater mussel is no longer an inhabitant of the British Isles, but still lives in the Seine, and is still more abundant in the Loire. Another freshwater univalve (Paludina marginata, Michaud), not British, but common in the south of France, likewise occurs, and a peculiar variety of Cyclas amnica, which by some naturalists has been regarded as a distinct species. With these, moreover, is found a peculiar variety of Valvata piscinalis.
If we consult Dr. Von Schrenck's account of the living mammalia of Mongolia, lying between latitude 45 and 55 degrees north, we learn that, in that part of North-Eastern Asia recently annexed to the Russian empire, no less than thirty-four out of fifty-eight living quadrupeds are identical with European species, while some of those which do not extend their range to Europe are arctic, others tropical forms. The Bengal tiger ranges northwards occasionally to latitude 52 degrees north, where he chiefly subsists on the flesh of the reindeer, and the same tiger abounds in latitude 48 degrees, to which the small tailless hare or pika, a polar resident, sometimes wanders southwards.*
(* Mammalia of Amoorland, "Natural History Review" volume 1
1861 page 12.)
We may readily conceive that the countries now drained by the Thames, the Somme, and the Seine, were, in the Pleistocene period, on the borders of two distinct zoological provinces, one lying to the north, the other to the south, in which case many species belonging to each fauna endowed with migratory habits, like the living musk-ox or the Bengal tiger, may have been ready to take advantage of any, even the slightest, change in their favour to invade the neighbouring province, whether in the summer or winter months, or permanently for a series of years, or centuries. The Elephas antiquus and its associated Rhinoceros leptorhinus may have preceded the mammoth and tichorhine rhinoceros in the valley of the Thames, or both may have alternately prevailed in the same area in the Pleistocene period.
In attempting to settle the chronology of fluviatile deposits, it is almost equally difficult to avail ourselves of the evidence of organic remains and of the superposition of the strata, for we may find two old river-beds on the same level in juxtaposition, one of them perhaps many thousands of years posterior in date to the other. I have seen an example of this at Ilford, where the Thames, or a tributary stream, has at some former period cut through sands containing Cyrena fluminalis, and again filled up the channel with argillaceous matter, evidently derived from the waste of the Tertiary London Clay. Such shiftings of the site of the main channel of the river, the frequent removal of gravel and sand previously deposited, and the throwing down of new alluvium, the flooding of tributaries, the rising and sinking of the land, fluctuations in the cold and heat of the climate—all these changes seem to have given rise to that complexity in the fluviatile deposits of the Thames, which accounts for the small progress we have hitherto made in determining their order of succession, and that of the imbedded groups of quadrupeds. It may happen, as at Brentford and Ilford, that sand-pits in two adjoining fields may each contain distinct species of elephant and rhinoceros; and the fossil remains in both cases may occur at the same depth from the surface, yet may be severally referable to different parts of the Pleistocene epoch, separated by thousands of years.