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Ordinary Meeting, November 12th, 1861. 

 Dr. R. Angus Smith, Vice-President, in the Chair. 



Mr. Thomas Coward was elected an Ordinary Member. 



Mr. E. W. BiNNEY said that some years since he read a 

 Paper before the Society, " On the Drift Deposits found 

 near Blackpool," which was afterwards printed in Vol X. 

 (new series) of the Memoirs. In the gravel at Bispham, 

 most probably the high level gravel of Mr. Prestwich, he 

 found nineteen species of shells, all identical with those now 

 found in the Irish Sea. He also stated that in the lowest 

 bed of till there found, full of scored and striated rocks, he 

 collected shells of the genera turritella, buccinum, nassa, 

 dentalium, nucula^ cardium^ and tellina. Owing to such 

 shells found in these deposits not having so arctic a character 

 as those said to be found in other till beds, it has been 

 supposed that they are of a more recent date than the glacial 

 age of Forbes, or the pleistocene of Lyell. Professor King, 

 of Queen's College, Galway, a geologist of high reputation, 

 in his Synoptical Table of British Aqueous Rock Groups, &c., 

 just published, classes the Blackpool fossils with post-pleisto- 

 cene, as shell sands occurring just under deposits now forming 

 around the shores of the British Islands, and immediately 

 above the Devonshire raised beaches. The Blackpool gravels, 

 near Bispham, are as good pleistocene as can be found in any 

 Proceedings— Lit. & Phil. Society— No. 4.— Session, 1861-62. 



