8 



everywhere. The earth of La Hesbaye, the yellow clay of our 

 fields, are the results of this great event; and the remains of 

 the inhabitants of the caverns are buried under a thick mass of 

 earth left by the torrential waters. Of extreme violence at its 

 commencement, this inundation abated by degrees its disastrous 

 effects, and covered the surface with fertile earth. Man to-day 

 draws life and wealth from that which to his ancestors brought 

 only death and destruction." 



"This inundation," he adds, "whether regarded from a 

 historical or geological point of view, carries back the antiquity 

 of the aboriginal jjopulation of the Lesse to a period of several 

 thousands of years." * 



After dinner, Mr. Etheridge, Palseontologist to the Geological 

 Survey of Great Britain, read an admirable paper on the Rhcetie 

 or Avicula contorta beds at Garden Cliff, Westbuiy-on-Sevem, 

 which he illustrated by some beautiful sections made by him 

 and Mr. Bristow, of the Geological Survey. He gave an 

 explanation of the sections, and referred to the leading fossils 

 characteristic of each bed, which for the occasion had been 

 furnished from the Museum at Gloucester, and from the col- 

 lection of Mr. Lucy. This paper is now included in the published 

 transactions of the Club, and will hereafter form the standard 

 authority respecting the beds of which it treats; — beds which, 

 though they occupy but a small and apparently insigtiificant 

 space in this country, never exceeding one hundred feet in 

 thickness, are the representatives of deposits of vast extent and 

 impoi-tance in Austria, Italy, France, Hanover, Savoy, Saxony, 

 Bavaria, and Switzerland, throughout which extensive area this 

 group is everywhere characterised by the cosmopolitan Avicula 

 contorta, the name of which, as applied to the beds in question 

 by Dr. Wright and others, is truly typical of the zone. 



Mr. Etheridge concluded by arguing from the insignificant 

 outlier at Garden Oliff, the importance of the careful study of 

 local sections, as furnishing the connecting link with distant 

 and more extensively-developed masses which constitute an 

 important feature in the structure of Europe, and to which we 

 * From a Translation by John Jones, Esq. 



