

On Cycloloculina. 531 



rated masses of Gardita (Venericardia) planicosta and acuticosta, 

 digging through which, one finds an equally rich bed of the large 

 Gyprcea tuberculosa. This bed reappears on the eastern side of 

 the Bill, opposite the now reclaimed Pagham Harbour, where 

 cockles have been gathered from time immemorial, and have 

 achieved a reputation to which testimony was borne by Izaak 

 Walton, who records that there are four good things in Sussex, 

 " a Selsey cockle, a Chichester lobster, an Arundel mullet, and an 

 Amberley trout." * Proceeding south-eastwards, we arrive at the 

 Turrit ell a beds of Earnley, beds which dip under the peninsula, 

 and (like the Gardita beds) reappear on the eastern side of the 

 Bill, opposite Park Farm. Further on, just before we reach 

 Thorney Farm, we find the shore, at low tide, literally strewn with 

 the little disks of Nummulites Iccvvjatus, whilst, opposite Thorney 

 Farm, we find Eocene deposits at the extreme limit of low tides 

 in which the gigantic shells, often two feet in length, of Gerithium 

 giganteum are not uncommon. The next, and, to us, a most 

 interesting deposit, is found immediately in front of Medmerry 

 Farm, now ruined by the encroachment of the sea, where a spit 

 of Post-Pliocene mud (a Pleistocene, or Post-Tertiary deposit), 

 runs out to sea, which can easily be examined at spring tides, and 

 is extraordinarily rich in fossil Foraminifera. The question as to 

 whether these are in situ, or derived, or partly derived and partly 

 in situ, we must leave for discussion when we present to the 

 Society the completed results of our work upon the Selsey shore 

 sands. Between Med merry Farm and the Thorney Coastguard Station, 

 a high bank of recent shingle, heaped up against the Eaised Beach 

 and the Coombe Eock, Mr. Clement Reid's section of which 

 (Postscript Xo. 9, p. 355) has been so often reproduced in works and 

 papers dealing with Tertiary and Post-Tertiary deposits, keeps the 

 sea (not always successfully) from inundating the low-lying 

 marshes that lie between the disused oyster beds of Medmerry 

 Farm and the "Windmill, which, at this point, forms a feature of 

 the landscape. " Passing Thorney Coastguard Station " (we quote, 

 for the sake of convenience, from Mr. Clement Beid's ' Memoir ' 

 upon the Sheet No. 332, Postscript Xo. 13), " we reach the highest 

 Eocene deposits represented in the Selsey peninsula. These con- 

 sist of clays and sandy rock-beds full of Foraminifera, such as 

 Nummulina variolaria, and Alvcolina sabulosa, etc.f The Mixon 



* The Complete Angler. Bv I. Walton and C. Cotton. London, 1653, 

 Chap. IV. Third Day. 



t It must be borne in mind that the locality identified in the early geological 

 memoirs as " Thorney Coastguard Station " is very misleading. The erosion of the 

 coast having practically washed away the old Thorney Coastguard Station, the 

 name has been transferred to the newer Coastguard Station two miles south-east, so 

 that in any memoir prior to 1863 Thorney Coastguard Station means Bracklesham 

 Bay, whilst in later memoirs (as, for instance, Mr. Reid's Geological Memoir, 

 Postscript, No 13) " Thorney" means the Coastguard Station heretofore known as 

 " Danners," which is at the end of West Street, Selsey. 



2 n 2 



