60 Rev. P. B. Brodie on the Geoloyy of the 



though I did not myself see it; at all events the ( Insect Lime- 

 stone 1 occurs at Granby between Denton and Nottingham, for 

 in the Grantham Museum there is a beautifully perfect fish, ap- 

 parently a Dapedium, from this stratum; the structure of this 

 limestone being so peculiar, that in the absence even of insect 

 remains, I had no difficulty in recognizing it. In this case, this 

 is the furthest point northwards in which it has been hitherto 

 detected ; and as it is largely quarried at Barrow on Soar near 

 Mount Sorrel in Leicestershire, its course may in all probability 

 be traced southwards with tolerable regularity into Warwickshire, 

 Worcestershire and Gloucestershire ; and it may extend, and very 

 likely accompanies the red marl in its range still further to the 

 north, perhaps even to the north-eastern coast of Yorkshire. 



The Gravel. 



The gravel in places near Grantham, especially at Ponton 

 Hill, two miles south of the town, is extremely interesting, and 

 there of some extent and thickness. It is mainly composed of 

 the debris of the inferior oolite, chalk flints, and other older 

 primitive rocks, such as granite, mica schist, porphyry, hard 

 quartzose sandstone, trap, and slate. I also observed boulders of 

 mountain limestone and Caradoc sandstone with characteristic 

 fossils. None of these boulders are very large. The gravel is 

 evidently derivative, and belongs to the period of the great north- 

 ern erratic drift, so extensively distributed over the counties of 

 Northamptonshire, Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire and Essex. 

 Near Cambridge a similar gravel may be observed, but the frag- 

 ments of which it is composed are much smaller, being at a 

 greater distance from their source. The gravel on Ponton Hill 

 is thirty feet thick : animal remains, so abundant in some lo- 

 calities in England, seem to be extremely scarce, for the labourer 

 who had worked there for years stated that he had never found 

 anything except a portion of a stag's horn, about ten feet from 

 the surface. At Bottisford, however, west of Grantham, there is 

 a bed of clay probably of a different age to the gravel above- 

 mentioned, containing bones of elephants, ox, deer, &c. 



Conclusion. 



Allow me, Mr. President, in conclusion (while we may justly 

 congratulate ourselves on the prosperity of our Society), to ex- 

 press a hope that each of our members will in his turn contribute 

 his share to the stock of general knowledge and new facts which 

 it is the object of our scientific meetings to promote. A good 

 dinner certainly is not a bad thing, and frequent reunions of sci- 

 entific friends are extremely delightful; but our aim must be a 



