TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 57 
slopes covered with thick underwood, rendering good clean sections extremely scarce. 
In fact, at present only two or three small openings, where the succession and order 
of the strata are clearly exhibited, occur. The best one is near the brow of the cliff 
at one of its highest points; it presents the following group : 
Thickness 
in feet. 
GT oT ce 
Rae ERAN sie To git ¥ 
10 a SR oa = Sandy flint gravel. 
6 Greenish grey marl with a few Cyrena 
a obovata. 
2 =< =~ See Dark clay full of Cyrena obovata, Pota- 
a —— = Teh mides and Melania. 
Laminated dark grey and brown clay, with 
8 large Septaria and shells in patches. 
c Corbula common. Impressions of plants. 
se a ge Clay full of Corbula. 
3 e Dark grey clay with Paludina lenta, Unio, 
Corbula, Melania and Natica. 
2 SSS a Ey eS . 
6 SS f= Band of Unis. 
eu A comminuted mass of Cyrena, Melania, 
and Potamides. 
{SSS SSS Sse h— Bed of small Melania. 
t Green and red marls; section imperfect; 
probable thickness almost 25 feet; few 
or no fossils. 
Devesoesenne eererescssee Peewee eeneensensanees 
About a 3 of a mile further west this last bed is seen to repose on 
Laminated brown and grey clay with 
1 j small Melania ; minute bones and teeth. 
Brown clay, full of Cypris, small Mela- 
a k nia, and seeds of plants. 
This appears to repose on red and green marls, with few or no fossils, and at the 
bottom of the cliff a thin band of ironstone full of Paludina lenta crops out. 
We thus have in the lower part of this section a deposit containing essentially 
freshwater Testacea, becoming more mixed as we ascend, with shells frequenting 
estuaries. Impressions of plants are not uncommon, and seed vessels (of the same 
species as those at Tolland’s Bay) are found in abundance in stratum k. 
It is a singular feature in this group, which I believe to form the upper beds of the 
freshwater formation of the Isle of Wight, that a large proportion of the species 
occurring in it are new; thus the two characteristic fossils are a species of the Po- 
tamides and one of Melania, neither of which do I find described. The Cypris also 
is peculiar to this locality. It is distinctly different from the Cypris faba, neither is 
it tuberculated. Some very small vertebre and bones are far from rare. Professor 
Sedgwick, as far back as 1818, described in the ‘ Annals of Philosophy’ the peculiar 
mixed freshwater and estuary character of the strata in this locality. Since then 
they have not been much noticed. I hope that they will now be more closely ex- 
amined, for I have little doubt but that, from the peculiarity of conditions, they 
will yield an interesting series of organic remains. I have merely time to point 
them out. 
