185 



ston is between them. The locality from which the earth was taken 

 is two miles from the sea. 



I also received from Mr F. F. Forbes, of Brookline, Massachu- 

 setts some earth from the new rail road cutting at Ocean Cot- 

 tage Farms Station, Boston, Massachusetts, and from Mrs. Sara A. 

 Fuller, who had them from Mr. Forbes, some dredgings from South 

 Boston Point, where he says Miocene fossils have bcen found. Mr. 

 Fuller has an oyster eleven inches long from the locality. The two 

 gatherings contain brackish forms of Bacillaria. 



The Bacillaria from Essex marsh are supposed by Mr. Cutler 

 to be recent, and I was disposed at first sight to think the forms 

 from Newark, New Jersey were recent also and I put them in the 

 « mud » as merely those who had gathered them before. I have from 

 further study of them these, and at other points where they have 

 been observed, proved them to be fossil. I mean fossil geologically. 



For I use fossil only in the geological sense. I first placed them 

 in the Champlain (?), but the Champlain period which Prof. C. H. 

 Hitchcock named from the occurrence of clays on the borders of 

 Lake Champlain, where they are called marine but are brackish for 

 the molluscan fossils are brackish and not marine, and although they 

 seem to be synchronous with the clays of Newark, can be separated 

 by the Bacillaria which are in the Newark clays, like those at Boston 

 and New Haven, a mixture of fresh water, brackish and marine, I 

 therefore called them Raised Coast clays, for they are on a coast 

 which is raised. Dr. J. S. Newberry called them the Littoral Plain 

 when discussing the plain around New York. But I have now pla- 

 ced them differently. 



I place them in the Middle Neocene period. Above the Miocene 

 Tertiary of the European geologist seemingly. 



These are about two hundred forms of Bacillaria present one 

 form Actìnocyclus ralfsii, J. R. being present also in what seems to 

 be the Upper Neocene, the Middle Neocene and the Lower Ncocene 

 periods. This form is remarkable as being found living now in the 

 salt water on ali the coast. It is a beautiful form being brightly colo- 

 red and brightly irredescent, bright scarlet, green and yellow and 

 marked with beads radiating ali over from the centre to the edge 

 of its round disc-like shell. It is one of the most puzzleing and 



