512 Geological Society. 



organic fossils, now for the first time adduced on this point, that the 

 red saliferous marls of Gloucester, Worcester, and Warwick shires, 

 with an included bed of sandstone, represent the keuper or marnes Iri- 

 shes of Germany; and that the underlying sandstone of Ombersly, 

 Bromsgrove, and Warwick is part of the hunter sandstein or gres 

 bigarr^ of foreign geologists. They are thus led to conclude that 

 though the muschelkalk.which intervenes between these formations in 

 Germany, is absent in the new red system of England, and of a large 

 part of France, its other members may be identified over the whole 

 of the north of Europe*. 



Proceeding from the new red to the oolite system, we have a me- 

 moir from Mr. Pratt containing an examination of the geological cha- 

 racter of the coast of Normandy, which necessarily implies a compari- 

 son of this series of rocks with those of England. The identification 

 is found to be complete, as had already been believed ; but Mr. Pratt 

 has made some alteration in the received doctrines on this subject; 

 for instance, the Caen stone, which is usually considered to repre- 

 sent the great oolite, he finds to resemble in its fossils the inferior 

 oolite. 



Ascending still, we have to notice Mr. Clarke's elaborate geological 

 survey of Suffolk, which, of course, refers entirely to the chalk and 

 overlying beds. With regard to the crag of this district, I may re- 

 mark that M. Desnoyers, in a communication made to the Geological 

 Society of France, has endeavoured to identify this formation with. 

 the Faluns of the Touraine. M. Deshayes had referred the latter 

 to the Miocene, and the crag to the Pliocene formations of Mr. Lyell. 

 The point is one of great interest, since it involves the question of 

 the value and right mode of application of the test of the relative 

 number of recent species, on which Mr. Lyell's classification, or at 

 least his nomenclature, is founded. I conceive that in a matter of 

 arrangement any arbitrary numerical character must lead to viola- 

 tions of nature's classifications ; and can only be considered as an ar- 

 tificial method, to be used provisionally till some more genuine prin- 

 ciple of order is discovered! . 



Mr. Clarke, in his survey, has noted as one division of the diluvium 

 of his district, a clay of a yellowish or bluish hue, containing rolled 

 pieces of chalk. This deposit is of great extent and thickness in East 

 Anglia and the neighbouring parts J; and is worth notice, since this 

 deposit is one main cause of the geological confusion and obscurity in 

 ■which that region is involved. In the neighbourhood of Cambridge 

 this diluvial deposit is called the hrown clay ; and I can state, from 

 my own experience, that the recognition of it as a separate bed at 

 once rendered the stratification clear, where it had long been unin- 

 telligible. 



[* See Lond. and Edinb. Phil. Mag., vol. ix. p. 318.] 



[t An abstract of Mr. Clarke's paper was given in Lond. and Edinb. 



Phil. Mag. vol. xi. p. 110 : see also the papers referred to in note * p. 114 



of the same volume, and Mr. Charlesworth's remarks on the subject in his 



Magazine of Natural History, vol. ii. p. 117.] 



[X See Mr. Rose's paper in Lond. and Edinb. Phil. Mag., vol. viii. p. 28. 



