NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS BEAVER (Castor fiber). Mr. H. D. Collings sent to me the skull of a beaver found in the Valley of the Waveney near Bungay and apparently thrown out when dredging. It was almost complete save that the incisors and anterior two thirds of both nasals have been broken off recently: the breaks are clean and not mud stained. The lower jaws were not recovered. It is mud stained and there is no evidence of it having been in peat.
It is the skull of a young adult: the enamel foldings on the crowns of the teeth are scarcely worn and some of the sutures not yet completely fused, the sagittal crest not as high posteriorly as in older animals. There is in the British Museum (Natural History) the skull of a beaver from 'Norfolk, from peat bog' of a very comparable size but with 'pre-molars worn flat, sagittal crest high'. Their respective measurements are: Condylo-basal Zygomatic length, mm. breadth, mm. Norfolk 142 106 Bungay 143 102
Maxillary tooth row, mm. 33 33
The beaver was widely distributed in Britain from the pleistocene onward, finally disappearing in the 12th or 13th Century. R O E D E E R (C. capreolus). Mr. H . D . Collings sent to me a right antler of a roe-deer found on a spoil heap from dyke cleaning on the Hundred River at Kessingland. It is still attached to a piece of the right frontal separated from the left frontal and parietal at the suture. All traces of the deposit in which it was found have been washed off. The greatest length from the base of the Coronet is 260 mm., the circumference at the Coronet 135 mm., at the beam immediately above the Coronet 90 mm. The 'pearls', or rugosites, on the inner side of the beam are very pronounced, the largest 15 mm. in length. A modern sportsman would call it a remarkably good head. Both roe and red deer are forest animals and were abundant in Britain from the pleistocene onwards but gradually disappeared with the forest. The red deer survived in the largely treeless 'deer forests' of the Scottish highlands, the roe deer in the Woods of the Scottish lowlands but disappearing from England where it was re-introduced in the 19th Century.
The remains of both are common in post glacial deposits. CRANBROOK.