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15.—Description or somE Fosstns rrom a Croypon GARDEN. 
By Gerorce J. Hinnz, Ph.D., F.R.S. 
(Prates I, ann II.*) 
(Read October 18th, 1904.) 
I wisx to call the attention of the Society to some fossils, now 
exhibited, which have been collected in my garden at South 
Croydon from time to time during the last eighteen years. The 
garden is situated on the higher part of the west slope of the 
valley along which the Brighton Road runs. The Chalk is here 
near the surface, and is only covered by a layer of soil about a 
foot in thickness. This surface soil consists of chalky débris 
commingled with a brownish sandy loam, the residue of the 
Eocene Tertiary deposits which once spread over the area. The 
fossils are found in this surface soil, and they have evidently 
been weathered out of the Chalk where they now occur. There 
is no evidence for assuming that they have been brought to their 
present position from a distance, though in some cases, perhaps, 
they may have been washed down from the higher part of the 
slope by the action of rain. 
The fossils are, for the most part, rounded bodies ranging from 
the size of a mustard seed to that of a large playing marble; 
they are of a greyish tint, much resembling water-worn pebbles 
of Chalk, and to an ordinary observer they would doubtless ap- 
pear of this character, and would not be considered worth picking 
up to look at. Until very lately they do not seem to have been 
noticed by geologists in the Chalk of this neighbourhood, and 
there is no mention of them in the lists of fossils in the Chalk of 
the railway cuttings between Croydon and Oxted, so carefully 
drawn up by the late Caleb Evans, unless, perchance, they are 
included in the term Coscinopora.+ 
But that these bodies are altogether different from mere Chalk 
pebbles can be proved by examining them with a lens, their 
surfaces will then be seen to consist of a very fine reticulation 
or network formed by the junction of small bodies with four arms 
or rays (Pl. II., figs. 2,4). These are connected so as to bound 
small rounded holes which are the apertures of canals radiating 
from the centre of the fossil. On splitting open a specimen the 
canals appear as fine straight lines (Pl. I., fig.6). When well 
* By the kind permission of the Council of the Royal Microscopical 
Society, these plates have been reproduced from the Journal of the Society 
for February, 1904. 
+ Geologists’ Association, 1870, p. 30. 
