HOLMESDALE NATURAL HISTORY CLUB. 19 



Rain or snow fell on 220 days as against 223 in 1876, and showed 

 an excess of 4-95 inches. The total is the largest since the year 

 1872. The greatest amount that fell in one day was Ij inches on 

 the 11th November; the quantity measured in London on the same 

 day was -875 inch. In 1876 the heaviest rainfall in one day was 

 •82 inch ; but last year this amount was equalled or surpassed six 

 times. In January rain fell on 29 days, and in June on 7 only. 

 Our rainfall was in excess of that of London every month except 

 July, when thunderstorms occurred there from which we were free. 

 Some particulars were also given respecting some periods of extra- 

 ordinary barometrical depression and excitement. 



Evening Meeting, Feb. 8th, 1878. Mr. J. B. Crosfield and 

 Mr. Edwin Ashby exhibited a number of fossils from the Gault 

 formation, which had recently been obtained near Gatton Comer, 

 where drainage excavations have been going on. The most abundant 

 shell was Inoceramus concentricus, specimens of which were in some 

 lumps of clay crowded thickly together. 



Mr. Sydney Webb read a paper on the "Gault of Redhill." 

 After describing the manner of deposit and the character of the 

 organic remains of the Gault, he proceeded to say that in this neigh- 

 bourhood it may be divided into three sections. " The upper portion 

 (which is not always present, having sometimes been removed by 

 superficial drift action) is pale drab in color, varied with yellowish 

 pale brown. Its fossils are numerous and irregularly distri- 

 buted. It is very adhesive when wet, but crumbles away 

 when dried in the sun. Sometimes it has been mistaken or worked 

 for fire-brick earth, but it is almost worthless for that purpose 

 except in neighbourhoods where through scarcity of that article an 

 inferior quality commands a market price. The second section 

 consists of a bluish gray or dark-blue earth, but paler in color when 

 dry. It contains alternating beds of Inocerami and Ammonites, the 

 former very numerous, crushed together into a band sometimes of 

 considerable thickness, the lower part of the bed often almost want- 

 ing in other fossils. The lowest division of the Gault consists of a 



