File:The Quarterly journal of the Geological Society of London (12645942103).jpg

1803..
FISHER LEXBEN" BRTCk'-PIT.
39.
River Colne.
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73
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Occupying a trough about 30 feet wide
in this gravel, and running parallel with the
southern boundary, where the newer strata
abut upon the older gravel, is found a deposit
of fine grey clay passing into carbonaceous
clay with rootlets, and resting upon it a bed
of peat (e), In the central and thickest part
the peat measures about a foot in depth, and
the grey clay 3 feet. The clay extends
north and south beyond the edges of the
peat, and both are planed off above to one
general surface. A thin seam of whitish
gravel and yellow clay, and, above that, about
a foot of whitish clay, cover these deposits,
and pass upwards into the main bed of brown
brick-earth (d) hereafter to be described.
As far as Palaeontology is concerned, the
interest of the locality is confined to this re-
markable trough, which has formed a perfect
cemetery for the pachyderms of the period.
Elephas primigenius is found abundantly,
associated with Rhinoceros leptorhinus, of
which latter animal some fine jaws were ob-
tained here by Mr. Brown, who placed them
in the British Museum. Their bones lie upon
the surface of the clay immediately beneath
the peat, while their condition shows that
they have been affected by contact with it.
The peat itself contains an amazing number
of fragments of Beetles in a remarkable state
of preservation. I collected as many speci-
mens as I could find in the portion of peat
that had been dug out during the past win-
ter, and submitted them to the inspection of
my friend Mr. Wollaston, and I have ap-
pended his highly interesting description of
them to this paper.
The peat has almost thinned out at the
point which the excavations have reached
towards the east ; but what remains of it
seems unaltered in character, as if it were
the remaining portion of a thicker mass, of
which the upper part has been removed by
denudation.
In digging the brick-earth, the workmen
are now stopped at the south end of the pit
by a bank of sandy gravel (c), with a slope of
about 30°. This I concluded to be a talus of
the ancient bank of the valley ; and accord-
ingly, upon digging into it, I found that its