Absence of Elephant and Rhinoceros in Turbiferous Series.

The basement beds of the Turbiferous or Newer Alluvial Fen Beds are clearly separated by their stratification from the Areniferous or Older Alluvial Terrace Beds down the sloping margin of which they creep, but there is not anywhere, as far as I am aware, any passage or dovetailing of the Fen Beds into the gravel of the river terraces, while the difference in the fauna is very marked.

It is however from such sections as those just described that the erroneous view arose that the Elephant and Rhinoceros occurred in the older Fen Beds. It is true that they have been found under peat in the Fenland, but that is only where the gravel spurs of the Old Alluvial Terraces or Areniferous Series have passed under the newer Fen Beds.

I saw the remains of Rhinoceros tichorhinus in the gravel beds belonging to the older or Areniferous Series at Little Downham, and from the base of the gravel in the Whittlesea brickpit I obtained a fine lower molar of Elephas antiquus. This was, however, not in the Gravel, but squeezed into the soft surface of the underlying Jurassic Clay.

There have never been any remains of Elephant or Rhinoceros found in the Turbiferous series.