On some Fossil Mammals from Western Suffolk

FOSSIL MAMMALS OF WESTERN SUFFOLK

195

ON SOME FOSSIL MAMMALS OF WESTERN SUFFOLK.

BY HENRY

ANDREWS.

THE data for this paper are gathered from MS. diaries and notebooks, in my possession, compiled by my grandfather, the late Henry Trigg (olim Prigg) of Babwell FriaryinSt. Edmundsbury, esquire, who died during 1892. This well-known pioneer of local pre-history, whilst primarily a collector and Student of Early Man's works, discovered in their association many remains of his cceval fauna, mainly in the fluviatile drift deposits to the west of our county.

An outstanding site at Lavenham is a pit above the River Brett, which showed a section of eight feet loam, under surface soil and over four feet of small flints in a matrix of sandy loam.

Resting on white clay at the base of this Stratum were found over twenty tusks of Hippopotamus amphibius-major, Owen (cf. Cat. Foss. Mam. Brit. Mus. ii, p. 279) : the same here in early Pleistocene times as now in Africa, exclusively a hotclimate animal of the marshes.

The River Lark's bed provided the greatest field of study, and the richest deposit found was that nearest its source. A few miles south of Bury it rises in a tract of boulder-clay ; and a pit at Sicklesmere, extensively worked for gravel last Century, yielded fragments of a great tusk, some eleven feet long, of the Mammoth (Elaphus primigenius, Blum.), so important a contemporary of late Palaeolithic Man. This beast was very similar in size and structure to the modern Indian elephant, excepting in its coat of hair and the elaborately curved huge tusks. The present tusk lay in a sandy vein that was eighteen feet beneath the surface ; and with it were remains of the Woolly Rhinoceros (R. tichorhinus, Fsh.), and the Two-horned species (R. antiquitatis) that, like the mammoth, wore a thick pelt of wool and long hair against the sub-arctic conditions in which it lived. Also there were the Auroch or long-faced ox (.Bos primigenius, Boj.) that was seen by Caesar during historic times in the Hercynian forest, the European Bison {Bison bonasus, L.) still surviving in Lithuania and the Caucasus, the Wild Horse (Equus caballus-fossilis, Rut.) which has not been recorded in this country since Pleistocene times, and the Red Deer (Cervus elaphus, Linn.) our familiar British animal of the present day, that appeared on life's stage as early as the Pliocene period and has persisted unchanged ever since : a real link with the past.

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FOSSIL MAMMALS OF WESTERN SUFFOLK.

Nearer Bury was a brick-pit showing the strata : surface soil with red loess to a depth of twelve feet, over a deposit of fine marl containing the seeds of Chara and other vegetable remains, with abundant freshwater and land shells of the genera Planorbis, Helix, etc. ; in tbis loess occurred bones of an unspecified Elephas. At the Grindle Pit* on a tongue of land between the Valleys of the Lark and its tributary the Linnet, among a seam of stones in stiff black loam matrix beneath brick-earth, was found part of the distal end of some large Ruminent's horn (probably a Bos or a Bison), sawn half-through by a flint tool and thence broken off. Amidst low-level gravel actually in Bury, beneath a six feet bed of marl that contained abundant remains of the molluscan genera Anodonta and Bithinia, occurred various bones of Cervus, Bos, and other mammals.

A chain of small pits, worked for brick-earth to the west of the town, lay between the Lark and Linnet Valleys in a slight depression, crossing a ridge and forming the early course of the Linnet when joining the Lark at the now-dry Tay Fen. In one pit was found part of the skull of a pre-Man (Homo Neanderthalis, auct.), maker of the Mousterian flint implements ; this is the only trace of fossil Man that has come to light in these drift deposits which are so füll of his flint handiwork. In another pit were the grinders of Elephas primigenius ; and a labourer assured my grandfather that in an adj acent pit he had found, many years previously—say, circa 1860—the entire skeleton of a Man beside an Elephant's tusk, in solid brick-earth at eight feet below the surface. What priceless treasures to Science may be hidden for all time beneath a bushel of ignorace !

About six miles down the Lark Valley at Icklingham', in a compact gravel some fifty feet above present water-level and six hundred yards from the present stream, remains of Elephas were exposed ; and, in a bed of loess at a slightly higher level, part of the antler of a Reindeer (Rangifer tarandus, Linn.).

Three miles on, in Mildenhall, is Warren Hill, the world-famous site for Acheulean type flint-implements. The Hill consists of a remarkable deposit of stony detritus in a matrix of sand and chalk, along with numerous chalk-stones and older pebbles.

It yielded bones of Bos, Bison, Equus and teeth of three kinds of Elephas: E. primigenius, E. antiquus, Falc., which is the straight-tusked species that is larger than the first and allied to our modern African elephant, and the Southern Elephant (E. meridionalis, Nest.), a huge beast fully fifteen feet in height. * This is a n a m e likely t o be as old as t h e c o n t a i n e d b o n e : cp. ' ' G r i n d e i e s p y t t " in a v e r y e a r l y A n g l o - S a x o n g r a n t (Birch, C a r t u l .

S a x o n i c u m , no. 1 2 0 ) . — E d .

FOSSIL MAMMALS OF WESTERN SUFFOLK.

197

Two entirely different climates are represented by these bones : the former Ungulata and the Mammoth lived during very cold and late Pleistocene times, while the other two Proboscidea existed in hot, moist and sub-tropical days at the opening of that period. A paper-weight formed from the grinder of, I believe, the Straight-tusked Elephant, is before me as I write.

In my grandfather's time Warren Hill was just beginning to be worked for gravel; and, beyond its own elevation above the neighbouring heathland, it was surmounted by three round barrows that were crowned by Scots pines of considerable size.

All now, alas ! is completely dug away ; but the aspect of such a landmark must have been most commanding. Mr. Trigg excavated these tumuli, and what concerns the present paper is a deposit of eighteen fine Cervus elaphus antlers, so placed as to protect one of the interments. Unfortunately they were in a very decayed State, but he was able to take some measurements before their final dissolution : " The beams of four horns, midway between the bez antler and crown, measured in circumference respectively six, five and a quarter, and five inches ; another, at an equal distance between the brow and bez antlers, had a circumference of seven inches, and a brow antler originally quite fourteen inches long following the curve, the greatest circumference of which was five inches ; another brow antler measured thirteen inches. Immediately above the burr four other portions measured nine and a quarter, nine, and eight and a half inches. In some cases the brow antler was double. The entire length of the two horns measured was respectively three feet two inches, and two feet eleven inches." A stag with a " head " of such magnitude would cause, to put it mildly, no small sensation among present-day Scots deer-stalkers or followers of the Devon and Somerset Hounds.

I will not attempt to describe the complex strata at the classic High Lodge, about a mile north of Warren Hill; here, besides implements of Mousterian Man, occurred remains of Elephas [section of tusk recently found by Miss Layard.—Ed.], with teeth of a large fossß Horse. In Mildenhall Fen was found a horn of Bos primigenius in peat at the depth of ten feet; it was eight and twenty inches long, twenty across the curve, and had a basal circumference of fifteen inches. Along the county's north border runs the Little Ouse, on whose southern bank certain pits below Thetford, at both Red Hill and White Hill, yielded remains of Elephas, Bos, Cervus and Equus.

Finally come notes on excavation at the supposed piledwelling in Barton Mere, the bottom of which consisted of a dark clay deposit varying from one to five feet in depth,

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NOTE ON THE EARTHQUAKE OF 1 9 3 1 .

overlying a tenacious peat-coloured clay upon a marly-chalk that formed the basin. In this clay were discovered many animal-bones, all employed as food and consisting of the Celtic Shorthorn (Bos longifrons, Owen), Red Deer, Swine (doubtless Sus scrofa, Linn.), Sheep (Ovis aries, auct., not indigenous) or much more likely Goat (Capra hircus, known to have been feral in Ireland), Wolf (Canis lupus, Linn., formerly too common) or large Dog (Canis domesticus, extensively exported from Britain in Roman times), the Urus and Hare (Lepus Europaus, Pall.). Among these the dominancy of Celtic Cattle horns over those of Deer implies a comparatively late period in the Stone Age or possibly even that of Bronze. The Urus bones were represented by metatarsi and humeri; those of the Hare by no more than one tibia ; and of the Canis by a Single humerus.

The foregoing is not intended to be a complete list of our extinct Mammalia, but may well be admitted as no insignificant memorial of one man's spare-time labours in the cause of human knowledge : the more especially because Palaeontology, as already noted, was merely a side-line in the work of my esteemed grandparent. Furthermore, I consider it highly romantic to reflect upon times when such magnificent beasts roamed and lived out their lives in conjunction with our own primitive ancestors, over the very same territory whereon we now seek humbler prey for our enlightenment and the edification of fellow Naturalists.

NOTE

ON THE EARTHQUAKE

OF

1931.

BY F. L. BLAND, F.Z.S., F.R.MET.S. As England may not have another such experience for centuries, the facts of this phenomenon shall be briefly recorded here.

At a half-hour after midnight on 7 May 1931, without the least premonition, Britain excepting the Cornwall duchy and N.W. Scotland, S. Norway, W. Flanders, Picardy and Normandy, an area of some 150,000 sq. miles, were awakened by an Earthquake that began at 12.25 and 43 seconds at the Dyce observatory in Aberdeen, 12.25 and 55 at W. Bromwich, and 12.26.0 at Kew. The tremors were violent, travelling about 4 J miles per second, and pulsation lasted for 20 minutes, attaining maximum 11 minutes after the first shock ; but amplitude was so great as to exceed the seismological registration's limits.

Within ten minutes Kew had estimated the epicentre to lie just