1895.] NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. . 15 
bles, sand and clay were transported with the shells and de- 
posited in their present resting place. 
The serpula bed also presents some marked characteristics, 
the first of which is that all the tubes are free and completely 
separated from any attachment they may have had previous to 
their deposition. It cannot be advanced that they may never 
have been attached, for the habit of the Serpula is well known. 
The surface of the bed moreover consists of a layer of pulverized 
Serpuja such as might be produced by the action of waves in 
shallow water, were not the intermixture of clayey sand with the 
Serpula conclusive evidence that no such action took place at 
this point while the deposit was being formed. Moreover there 
occur in the bed angular fragments of rock, such as are only 
produced by glacial action. If to account for these we 
assume that they have been dropped from floating ice at this 
point, we should expect to find an appreciable quantity of drift 
mingled with the Serpula, but we do not,as the small amount of 
clayey matter intimately mingled with the tubes could not have 
been introduced in this way. We must therefore conclude that 
this is also transported material from deposits formed, perhaps, 
only a short time previous. The shells of Venus mercenaria, 
moreover, appear to have been subjected to considerable friction 
from their smooth convex surface. 
In the upper shell bed we have again a repetition of this evi- 
dence. Mr. Rathbun’s observations, however, are not cor- 
roborated by the section exposed at the time of my visit. He 
states that the upper bed consists chiefly of broken shells with- 
out any ferruginous matter. While this is true of the fragment 
bed it does not apply to the fossiliferous stratum immediately 
overlying the Serpula bed, which is quite similar to the lower 
shell bed, but differs in its fossils, as already stated. 
The fragment bed, which crowns the shell-bearing strata, 
offers a striking resemblance to unsolidified coquina, as Mr. 
Scudder has very justly remarked. It, however, differs from it 
in the fact that it contains much fine clayey matter, and hence, 
as a whole, cannot have been the immediate result of surf action. 
The assumption that these beds consist chiefly of transported 
material is supported by the fact of the occurrence of giauconite 
in the stratified sands above and below the shell beds. This is 
well known to be a deep-water deposit and to occur out of reach 
of the land wash. Its presence in the deposits under consider- 
ation must, therefore, be due to the erosion of older beds and 
the mingling of their débris with fine sand which was brought 
to this region and deposited by currents probably originating 
from the first melting of the ice sheet. Again, at a point a few 
