29 



Clay IS a freshwater one. Tlie former, belonging to the tertiary 

 period, occurring in a great depression to the north of the North 

 Downs and in another to the south of the South Downs 

 abounding in marine remains as weU as fossU wood swept from 

 SV^ ^f^*}- *^^^« of a more purely marine origin than the older 

 Weald Clay, of the secondary period, the fossils from which are 

 of a freshwater type, Paludinse and Cyclas being characteristic 

 shells, containing beds of marble apparentlj^ deposited in old 

 lake liottoms m what was once the surface of the clay and known 

 as the Bethersden and Petworth marbles,— fine examples bein? 

 afforded by some of the old altar slabs of the churches in the 

 neighbourhood, subsequently converted into tomb stones or steps 

 The local formation of the Weald occupies a central position be- 

 tween the North and South Downs, and, passing under the 

 tertiary and cretacious rocks of the South Downs, re-appears in 

 the Isle of Wight, from whence the mineral exhibited was ob- 

 tained. We are indebted to the labours of Dr. ManteU and his 

 Wife for much of our knowledge of this formation. Their names 

 will be for ever associated with that gigantic lizard, the lo-uano- 

 don, which being more than thirty feet in length and twe^'nty in 

 circumference, is more charming as a fossU than it could ever 

 have been as a Imng specimen. To the west the Wealden sinks 

 under the lower greensand and chalk of Hampshire. To the 

 east, on the opposite side of the Channel, it shows itself near 

 Boulogne. In these days, when gunnery has attained a develop- 

 ment that even a few years ago would have been thought impossi- 

 ble. It IS not uninteresting to remember that the first cast-iron '-un 

 made in this country was cast at I^uxted, on the borders of Kent 

 in Henry the Eighth's reign, from iron obtained in the Weald, and 

 melted by the charcoal furnished bv the forests, that have given the 

 name of Woodland, Wold, or Weald to the district, and to this 

 remarkable geological formation. 



September 'ith, 1878. 



The following very interesting paper was contributed by Colonel 

 Horslcy : — 



Some two or three years since I exhibited to the Society a speci- 

 men of "Lythrum salicaria," which I had found growing by the 

 side of the dyke on the road leading from St. Stephen's to Broad 

 Oak and Heme. I at that time compared it with the coloured plate 

 and description of the same flower, given at p. 67, of Dr. Lindley's 

 Ladies' Botany, vol. II., and found it differed in one or two impor- 

 tant points, viz., in the anthers and pollen of the six longer stamens 

 whicli, in the plate, are both coloured yellow, while in my speci- 

 men the anthers were purple and the pollen emerald green. The 

 SIX shorter stamens were, in both instances the same, i.e., both had 



