The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1875-08-28 00:00:00

THAMES VALLEY 'ELEPHANTS.

zoological collection of remarkable interest, more
particulaily to Londoners, has been added durinc the
present year to the British Museum (~ays The Times).
It consists of the Thames Valley series of remains of
British elephants, rhinoceri, deer, ox, &c., which have
been discovered in the Ilford Marshes, near Stratford,
during the last 30 years, and has hitherto formed
the unique private collection of Sir Antonio Brady,
of Stratford-le-point. The nature and value of this
collection as now exhibited at the British Museum
will appear from the following facts. It contains
remains of no less than 100 elephants, all of which
have been obtained from Ilford. These are referable to
two species—viz., Elcphas primigenus, the mammoth,
and E. antiquus, a more southern form. The
skeletons of -each species are represented by
many, fine examples, and the collection of teeth
and jaws represents elepants of every age
and size, from the sucking calf, with milk molars,
to the patriarch of the herd whose last molars are
so won that they must have become useless for grind-
ing Ms food. One characteristic of the .Ilford ele-
phants is the number of the plates in the last molar
tooth, which has never been found to exceed 19in. or
Vin., as asainst the 2tin. and sometimes 28in. in
other species. The largest tooth is 10in, in length.
The spectator cannot fail to be struck with the singu-
larly long and spirally curved tusks of the adult Ilferd
mammoths, so different from the short and almost
straisfht tusks of the more familiar elephants of modern
days. The longest tusk in the collection measures 91t.
The general evidence, however, is held to show that
the Ilford elephants were rather a small race. The
rhinoceri of the Thames Valley are represented by 86
remains, of three species, distinguished by the character
or the absence of the bony nasalseptum—viz.,Rltinoceros
megarhinus, B. leptorhinus, and.R. tichorhinus. The last-
named, like the mammoth, was clad in a fleece, the
climate of the period being apparently of Arctic severity.
The British lion, which recent geology shows to have
been no myth, is represented by a lower jaw and a
phalanx of the left forefoot. On the Kent side of the
river, at Erith and Crayford, some five canine teeth of
the cave lion have been found, but these at present are
in a private collection at Belvedere. The Brady col-
lection also includes the Thames Valley hippopotamus,
which is found at Grays, as well as at Ilford. The
ruminants, such as the stag, bison, and ox, con-
stitute fully one half the collection, numbering
more than 500 specimens. They include seven speci-
mens of the great Irish elk, Aregaceros hibernicus, and
50 of the red deer. In the pal.vate catalogues of the
collection, Messrs. Woodward and Davies remark
that the heavy bovidce of the Thames Valley, judging
from the number of their fossil remains, seem to have
been subject to greater casualties by floods and other
causes than the lighter and fleeter deer tribe,
or existed in larger herds. Why Ilford and
other places by the Thames should have become, as
it were, vast natural cemeteries for the denizens of
the old Thames country is thus explained by the same
gentlemen :—" If we could restore the physical fea-
tures of the Thames as they existed in Pleistocene
times, we should doubtless find that Ilford, Erith,
Grays, &c., mark the sites of ancient bays, formed by
the debouchement of the side valleys, and giving rise in
flooltime to eddies, into which the floating carcases
of land animals weuld be drawn, and in time sink and
become entombed in the soft and yielding mud be-
neat's." Since the Thames has retrenched its ancient
borders, its former bed has become occupied by man,
and excavations now reveal its wonderful and varied
contents. The task of excavating and preserving the
Ilford specimens forms a history by itself, and is
honourably associated with the name of Mr. William
Davies, of the British Museum.