Proceeding?. cxiii. 



favourable one, and many other species might have been 

 observed had time and tide permitted. I noted that Pagurus 

 bernhardus here was inhabiting the dead shells of Fnsus 

 islaiidicus and Bu'cinnin iindaUun. 



I may mention that one of the largest British star fishes is 

 taken by the trawlers off this part of Northumberland ; it is 

 Goniaster equestris and so far as I am aware it does not occur 

 much farther south than this. Here is a striking instance of the 

 favourable surroundings of a Northern locality being more 

 conducive to the existence of a fine form, than a Southern, and, 

 as we might think, a more congenial and life-supporting one. 



I will now make a few remarks on the other specimens 

 exhibited and which are from parts of the main coast adjacent 

 to the Fame Islands. 



North Sunderland, a small fishing hamlet, from which the 

 islands are visited, is built on rocks of the Carboniferous series 

 with large dykes of Basalt in the district, on one of which 

 Bamborqugh Castle stands. To the North the coast line is 

 composed of dunes, or hills of blown sand. From these sand 

 hills I obtained some very decided varieties oi Helix nemoralis, 

 the most beautiful being one of a bright warm brown tint, 

 devoid of bands ; owing to the abrading nature of sand in 

 motion, many of the shells in this locality were injured in the 

 epidermis. Soma beautiful forms of Helix virgata were also 

 found here, having the bands transparent, or nearly so. 



A curious fact which I noticed, and one that I have observed 

 before, was, that owing to the scarcity of stones on these sand 

 hills the birds had made use of the few there were as regular 

 " slaughter-houses," for around every suitable stone were heaps 

 of the smashed shells of the snails already mentioned, as well 

 as of H. aspersa. 



On the coast south of North Sunderland the sand hills give 

 way to more level expanses which flank a small estuary where 

 many illustrations of physical geolog}' could be observed in the 

 miniature deltas, shoals, bars, and underminings of the surface 

 formed by the little stream. 



On this sandy " link " //6'ZJ.ir nemoralis was very common, 

 but the varieties were decidedly different from those which I 

 obtained on the sand hills to the northward. 



I now pass on to the district at the mouth of the river Tyne, 

 from which the striated blocks of morainic fragments of rocks 

 exhibited on the table were procured. 



The Boulder or Glacial Clay is very generally distributed in 

 Northumberland and Durham, covering the palaiozoic rocks of 

 these counties to a considerable thickness. 



This deposit consists as usual of a brownish tenacious 

 unstratified clay containing i;iimense numbers of fragments 



A 8 



