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V.—On a Raised Beach and other Recent Formations, near Weston-super-Mare

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2009

E. C. H. Day
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Extract

I cannot refrain from adding, as a supplement to my remarks upon the Raised Beaches in the Pas de Calais, a few rough notes upon a similar formation, examined by me some years since, in Birnbeck Cove, near Weston-super-Mare. The distance apart of the two localities may seem to render this association of the descriptions uncalled-for, but a similar feature in each case makes a comparison between them interesting.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Geological Magazine , Volume 3 , Issue 21 , March 1866 , pp. 115 - 119
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1866

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References

1 The bones then obtained from this deposit were in the possession of the late Dr. Tomkins and of Charles Pooley, Esq., both of Weston, and some in my own. I have still a few of the teeth. Amongst my specimens is one tooth of Hytsnaspelaa, the Cave Hyaena. Mr. Pooley, if I remember rightly, also obtained some flints from the conglomerate—a remarkable fact, as no such flints are to be found anywhere in the neighbourhood, at the present day, unless artificially imported.

2 On examining the fossil remains of horses in the British Museum, I find two very distinctly-marked forms of teeth from the Kent's Hole Cave, the smaller of these are identical with those from the Weston Raised Beach. They may be the teeth of Professor Owen's Asinus fossilis, the fossil Ass or Zebra (v. Brit. Foss. Mammals, p. 397, fig. 158). The only carnivorous teeth from this beach in my possession is one of Hyœna spelœa, the Cave Hyæna, and one of Canis vulpes, the Fox. The occurrence of so many remains of the horse in this deposit reminded me of an anecdote told me by the late Mr. Atkinson, the celebrated Oriental traveller, of the cunning with which wolves will avail themselves of the physical difficulties of a country the more speedily to run down the horse. The pursued and pursuers being well matched in speed, the latter so arrange themselves that they gradually turn the frightened animal towards the nearest morass. Once therein, his speed is slackened, and his enemies have time to gather themselves up for the fatal spring. May not the instinct of the wolf of bygone days have prompted him to use the ancient cliff, as his Siberian successor does the marshy ground, as a means of more surely and swiftly reaching his prey? The terrified horse was driven to the edge of and over the precipice, which his foes then descended at their convenience to feast upon the mangled carcase.