Clifton College Scientific Society. 55 



The elytra of coleoptera have been discovered at StonesfieM, 

 near Oxford, and more recently at Aust ; but these remains have 

 always been detached, and in only one instance has any other part 

 of the insect been found ; that exception is a Curculio, and consists 

 of one leg attached to the wing. The Buprestis, a fanaily of beetles 

 remarkable for the brilliance of their wings, has several times been 

 discovered, especially in the iron-stone nodules of Coalbrookdale.* 

 In these ironstones, however, an extremely valuable specimen has 

 been extracted, displaying the elytra, thorax, and six legs, the last 

 of which shows the enlarged femur — a characteristic feature of 

 the Curculionidae. 



I have now to describe the bone-bed, which is very celebrated, 

 on account of the abundance of the fossil remains obtained from 

 it — saurian bones, fish-bones, and coprolites. These latter are 

 excrementitious remains, solid earthy residue of digestion, gene- 

 rally conical and spirally convoluted. This twisted appearance is 

 most frequently to be found in the coprolites of fishes, on account 

 of the arrangement of their intestines. As fossils, they are chiefly 

 interesting, as, in many cases, tending to prove the nature of the 

 being in which, or near which, they are found ; minute scales and 

 bones of fishes being frequently found in those of the carnivora. 

 They occur in all ages and formations. 



The bone-bed, which seems to have been the cemetery of the 

 saurians, lies, as in most cases, immediately between the Rhaitic 

 beds and trias. 



The occurrence of the bed shows that over a wide area similar 

 conditions have prevailed ; patches of sea-bottoms, here and there 

 being covered by fish remains, which could not be digested or 

 readily eaten, and the droppings of fish being mingled with them. 



The bed at Aust is a thin layer of siliceous grit, of a greenish 

 hue, highly charged with mica, and loaded with fossil remains, 

 among them the bones of gigantic reptiles. Siliceous strata of 

 this type generally abound with pyrites, and are probably an under 

 bed, coextensive with the lias throughout its course in the estuary 

 of the Severn, and are found at Frennilode Passage, Westbury 

 Cliff, and Aunard's CliflF, as well as at Aust. At a place called 

 Golden CliflP, in Monmouthshire, a similar bed is found, and in 

 Glamorganshire, near Cowbridge, at St Hilary. An extremely 

 interesting bone-bed exists at Watchet, but the fossils are difiicult 

 to extract, being brittle, and the matrix being hard. 



The saurians, the bones of which are often found, are of the 

 Enaliosaurian division of reptiles, and are principally Plesiosauri. 

 The animals of the genus Plesiosaurus present a remarkable devia- 



* Vide Geological Journal, September 1871. 



