8 TRANSACTIONS OF THE [oct. 28, 
These latter were made the subject of a communication by 
Messrs. E. Desor and E. C. Cabot as iar back as 1849,* and an 
abstract of the same by Mr. A. 8. Packard appeared in 1866,+ 
while in 1875 a more extended account was published by Messrs. 
S. H. Scudder and A. E. Verrill.{ In this latter paper more 
than fifty molluses, besides several bryozoons, crustaceans and 
echinoderms, are enumerated as having been found there. It is 
evident that there must have been a far better exposure of the 
strata when these accounts were written than exists at the pres- 
ent time. Thus the section as described by Desor and Cabot 
consisted of a bed of brown clay at the base, about twenty feet 
in thickness, over which were some sixty- five feet of stratified 
sands and gravels with peat and dune sand on the surface. 
Scudder also gives the same general description of the section, 
while in Shaler’s report he notes the changes which have taken 
place in recent years, the formation of a wide beach and the 
masking of the base by a talus upon which a considerable 
growth “of vegetation has taken hold, resulting in the complete 
obliteration of all trace of the clay. 
At the time of my visit I searched for a long time before I 
could find any indications of a shell bed, but finally discovered 
an exposure about a quarter of a mile south of Sankaty Head 
lighthouse. It was so mixed up in the talus that its limits, es- 
pecially in the lower part, were impossible to define, but I 
judged that the upper limit was about twenty feet above high 
water level and extended laterally only for a distance of some 
fifteen feet. The deposit had more the appearance of a pocket 
than a layer. Two hundred and sixty-one specimens, good, 
bad and indifferent, were collected, of which two hundred and 
five are Ostrea, Arca (Scapharca), Serpula and Venus, and of 
these a much larger number could have been gathered. 
Following is a “complete list, for verifications in which I am 
indebted to Professor R. P. Whitfield, of the American Museum 
of Natural History 
Mo.Luusca. 
Buccinum undatum Linné. (Fragmentary.) 
Ilyanassa obsoleta (Say.) Stimp. 
Crepidula sp? (Fragmentary. ) 
* On the Tertiary and more recent deposits in the Island of Nantucket. Quart. Journ. 
Geol. Soc., London, V. (1849) Proc. p. 340; also referred to in Proc. Boston Soe. Nat. 
Hist., II. (1848) 79, and Am. Journ. Sei., XIV. (1852), 51. 
+ Mem. Boston Soc. Nat. Hist. I. (1866), 252. 
t On the Post-Pliocene fossils of Sankoty Head, Nantucket Island; by A. E. Verrill; 
with a Note on the geology; by S. H. Scudder, Am. Journ. Sci., X. (1875), 364-375. 
