80 REPORT — 1856. 



but of other traces of the presence of the Hyaena there is not a shadow, nor indeed 

 of any other animal, except in its outskirts, as shown by the fractured jaws of Ursus 

 speleeus and ailtridens. In the German caves we know that the remains of the 

 Hyaena generally accompany those of the Bear, and under such circumstances as to 

 warrant the inference that certain species, at least, if not all, lived in good intelligence 

 together. In the centre of this chamber there was a double floor of stalagmite, be- 

 tween which was interposed a stratum of rubble sparry pipes, a black flint knife and 

 spots of charcoal, with shells of mussel and oyster, but no red marl or its usual 

 contents. The rest of the floor was regularly stratified in red and white laminae, ex- 

 hibiting no vestiges of adventitious matter or of interruption. The position of the 

 rubbly stratum occurring half-way down the section of the stalagmite, inclines me 

 to refer it to the same cause and epoch as the seam containing the Bears' remains 

 at the entrance of the Arcade of which we have already spoken." 



On the Evidence of a Reef of Lower Lias Rock, extending from Robin Hood's 

 Bay to the neighbourhood of Flamborough Head. By Capt. Woodall. 

 Capt.Woodall called attention to the fact that this reef joined the land at the point 

 where the lower lias is thrown up in contact with the inferior oolite of that part 

 of Yorkshire. He produced a specimen, which he had obtained twenty miles to the 

 south-east of Robin Hood's Bay, from a depth of 20 fathoms, and attempted to prove, 

 from the softness of the specimen, that the reef was liassic throughout. The very 

 straight inner margin of the reef, which extends twenty miles and upwards in one straight 

 line, was another reason for such argimient; and, by comparing the fossils contained 

 in the specimen exhibited witli some from the boulders of the Holderness coast, he 

 thought that there was a probability that those fossils had originally been derived 

 from this submerged area. 



On the Occurrence of Upper Lias Ammonites in the (so-called) Basement 

 Beds of the Inferior Oolite. By Thomas Wright, M.D., F.R.S.E. 



The brown sands which lie at the base of the Inferior Oolite are capped in some 

 localities, as at Beacon Hill, Frocester Hill, and Wotton-under-Edge in Gloucester- 

 shire, and in several places in Somersetshire and Dorsetshire, by a remarkable bed 

 containing a great number of Ammonites, Belemnites and Nautili, and which the 

 author designates " the Cephalopoda bed ; " by far the greater number of the 

 ammonites contained in these deposits, have not been figured in the ' Mineral 

 Conchology of Great Britain,' and are for the most part new as English fossils. Many 

 of the same species of Ammonites as those exhibited are found in France and Ger- 

 many, in strata which are regarded by the palteontologists of those countries as the 

 uppermost zone of the Upper Lias, and are only found in that particular horizon ; 

 whereas the equivalent strata in England have been described as the basement beds of 

 the Inferior Oolite. 



In the localities already enumerated the brown sands are overlaid by a bed of coarse 

 brown marly limestone, full of small, dark, ferruginous grains of the hydrate of iron, 

 which impart an iron-shot aspect to the rock : fossils are very abundant in this bed, 

 which attains only a few feet in thickness ; the true position of the Cephalopoda bed 

 is shown in the sections of Frocester Hill and Wotton-under-Edge, now exhibited. 

 Beneath this fossiliferous band or Ammonite bed are the so-called sands of the Infe- 

 rior Oolite, consisting of fine brown and yellow calcareous sands, often micaceous, 

 and attaining a thickness of from 2 to 150 feet. The sands contain in their upper 

 part inconstant layers of siliceo-calcareons sandstone, and sometimes in their lower 

 part inconstant concretionary masses of coarse sandstone, the lowest beds becoming 

 blue and marly, and passing insensibly into the clays of the Upper Lias. The sands 

 themselves are not fossiliferous, but sometimes nodules lying near their base are found 

 to contain organic remains. 



When unquestionable sections such as those at Beacon Hill, Frocester Hill, and 

 Wotton-under-Edge exist, it becomes a matter of great interest to study the boun- 

 dary between two such formations as the Lias and Inferior Oolite, as the general 

 principles developed in the investigation of this question apply equally to other frontier 



