This page needs to be proofread.

GEOLOGY mentions the unearthing of the tusk of elephant ; Dr. Garner * also records remains of elephant and rhinoceros, associated with the bones of red deer and roebuck, from the ' diluvial ' gravels of the same neighbourhood. In altering the course of the Fowlea brook a fine skull of the wild bull (Bos taurus var. primigenius) with the horn cores complete was found near Etruria station. 3 Remains of Bos taurus var. longifrons and Bos urus have also been met with at Stone. 3 It might be expected that, regarding their frequent occurrence in Derbyshire where recent discoveries show that the caves have probably existed from Pliocene times, 4 the remains of animals would be plenti- fully met with in fissures and caverns of the Carboniferous Limestone country of Staffordshire. This however is not the case, but from a fissure in the limestone at Bank End quarry, Waterhouses, in the valley of the Hamps, a large number of remains of Elepbas primigenius (mammoth) have been extracted from a red loamy clay mixed with fragments of limestone and rolled boulders of grit. 6 The rivers continued to suffer shrinkage down to the historical period and further modified their channels. This is best exhibited around Burton," in the Trent valley, where a narrow fringe of alluvium borders the river. This, as well as the higher, more elevated terraces, has been liable to floods, of which the record will be dealt with by the historian. The solid framework of the county has now been traced from the earliest rock-written record to the time when the landscape assumed its familiar outline. Everywhere physical feature has been found dependent on geological structure : the diversified moorland of the north, the two great coalfields, the enveloping lowlands, have all been traced to the composition of the rocks and their structure. The history of the past contained in the rocks is everywhere incomplete, and may be faithfully summed up in the words of Charles Darwin in speaking of the geological record as a whole : ' For my part, I look at the geological record as a history of the world imperfectly kept, and written in a changing dialect only here and there a short chapter has been pre- served ; and of each page only here and there a few lines.' 1 Natural History of the County of Stafford, p. 202 (1686). J Trans. North Staff. Field Club, vol. for 1878. 3 Ibid. xxx. 1 10. 4 W. Boyd Dawkins, Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xlix. (1903). 5 W. Brockbank, Proc. Lit. and Phill. Soc. Manchester (1862-4) ; J. Aitken, Traits. Manchester Geol. Soc. vol. xii. (1870-3). 8 W. Molyneux, Burton-on-Trent ; its History, its Waters, etc. (1868).