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several times whilst the work has been in progress, and watched 
its development from time to time, and am able now to give the 
result of my measurements. 
The rails rest upon the upper beds of the New Red Sandstone 
at the south-east, and at this point these beds have been exposed 
to a depth of 2ft. 7in. I have not found the trace of an 
organism in these beds, indeed it is a peculiarity of strata, 
coloured red by oxide of iron (such as these are) that fossils should 
be very rarely found. Whether this absence of organic life is 
due to the peculiar nature of the sediment deposited at that 
spot especially inimical to life, or whether this mineral has since 
its deposition a peculiar power of destroying all traces of organic 
structure I am unable to say ; but such is the case, and as a rule 
one looks to the gray beds which occur in this formation for the 
presence of fossils. 
This sandstone is succeeded by red marls mottled with green, 
about 6ft. in thickness. A remarkable band of Green Marl runs 
irregularly through these beds near the top; in the middle of this 
occurs a more or less persistent string of flesh-coloured mineral, 
Sulphate of Lime or Gypsum. Sometimes the regularity of the 
line is broken by cavities containing little crystals of this mineral, 
like the so-called Potato Stones in the Dolomitic Conglomerate 
of the Mendips. Anyone familiar with the Aust section will 
remember how this Gypsum occurs in the New Red there in 
large blocks. On top of this comes a persistent band of Greenish- 
gray sandy Marl, about ldin. thick; this apparently marks the 
boundary of the Triassic beds proper. 
During my last visit to the section, whilst these notes were in 
progress, I succeeded in proving satisfactorily that my supposition 
was correct, for this narrow band evidently represented the 
“bone bed” of other sections as I found a fish scale in it, and 
several drusy cavities where bone had been ; one of these cavities 
evidently marks the site of a decayed vertebra, as the cellular 
structure of the bone can be made out on careful examination 
