420 
Normandy) for the Oxford Clay, and so they have fallen back 
on Selbornian, from that village which Gilbert White has im- 
mortalized and where the Firestone beds of the U.G.S. were 
first brought into printed notice. (Selb. Chap. I. ; Cret. Rocks, 
2, 30). I conclude on the whole that Devizes would be the best 
head quarters whence to visit the various outcrops of the U.G.S., 
and Westbury or Warminster for a secondary base. 
I have occupied so much of your time and my space with the 
Wilts division of my Paper that I can only skim lightly over the 
surface of the Berks beds. But though I shall not dwell on the 
attractions of its Lower Greensands as exhibited in the Sponge- 
Gravels of Little Coxwell, near Faringdon, I say without hesitation 
that there are none more interesting, none that will so well repay 
a day’s excursion ; for they are unique, not only in British 
geology, but probably in the whole world. The uniqueness 
consists in this, that every part and portion of the entire mass is 
fossiliferous :—it is all sponge, or shell, or Bryozoa, or sea-urchin, 
with teeth of fishes and bones of saurians. Many sponges are as 
perfect as when they were growing. (Quite a number of specimens 
collected last autumn could never have been rolled about, being 
absolutely free from sand and incrustations, and must have 
remained attached to their native rocky bed until broken off by 
the quarrymen. ‘There are at least 43 specimens of Bryozoa, 
outside and inside most sponges ; on shells, pebbles, wood and 
bones. Whatever disappointments geologists, scientific or 
amateur, may have suffered in other quarries, they will meet with 
none at Coxwell. There they will be certain to get together, 
without exertion, as many fossils as they can carry away. 
Both the Upper and Lower Greensands—otherwise Selbornian 
and Neocomian—contain a great variety of Terebratule, 
Rhynchonelle, Pectens and other Bivalves ; but the leading 
fossils in both formations are emphatically Sponges and Echinites, 
and the selection before you consists entirely of these two classes. 
In the early days of Miss Benett and Mr. Lonsdale, the 
