TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 55 



destruction of some older deposit, perhaps an extension of the great miocene formation 

 of southern Europe. 



On the Remains of a Gigantic Bird from the London Clay of Sheppey. 

 By J. S. BowERBANK, F.R.S. 



The specimen described is a fragment of one of the bones of the extremities ; it is 

 4 inches long and 1 inch in diameter at the larger end, and is somewhat three-sided, 

 with rounded angles. The thickness of its walls is from | of a line to If line ; its 

 microscopic structure exhibits the characteristic bone-cells of animals of the bird irihe. 

 The specimen indicates the bird to have been at least the size of a full-grown Albatros. 



On the Pterodactyles of the Chalk Formation. 

 By J. S. BowERBANK, F.R.S. 

 The author exhibited drawings and restorations of remains of these winged reptiles, 

 showing that the great species of the chalk {P. Cuvieri) must have had a spread of 

 wing equal to 1.6 feet 6 inches ; whilst a second large species {P. compressirostris) was 

 estimated at 15 feet. The largest species from the lias previously well known, the 

 P. macronyx of Buckland, was only computed at 4 feet 7 inches from tip to tip of its 

 expanded wings. 



Indications of Upheavals and Depressions of the Land in India. 

 By Dr. Buist, LL.D. {Communicated by Col. Sykes.) 

 Referring to the well-known cases below the sea-level in Europe, Dr. Buist states 

 that all around the shores of India, from Calcutta to Bombay, appearances exactly similar 

 to these present themselves. In 1815, in the clearing out of the Dhurrumtollah Tank 

 in Calcutta, the workmen at the depth of about 24 feet from the surface passed through a 

 bedof sand and came tea group of full-grown trees ; these were standing perpendicularly 

 at short distances from each other, and had the appearance of trunks lopped off within 

 three or four feet from the roots*. In general they were about a foot and a half in dia- 

 meter ; they were firmly fixed in a dark loamy soil, into which their fangs spread in 

 every direction ; their elbows, where the trunk separated into the roots, were pecu- 

 liarly distinct ; they were of a reddish colour, the fibre soft and moist, but still preser- 

 ving unaltered the grain of the wood. The recent operations of Mr. Simms have given 

 an exactitude to these observations they did not at the time possess. The bottom of 

 the tank, where the roots were found, is, according to him, about 24 feetf below 

 the surface of the ground, which, again, is about a similar distance above the lowest 

 low-water mark at Kyd's Dock, this last being about the same level with the bottom 

 of the tank ; so that with a tide range of 16 feet the tree-roots arc 8i feet beneath the 

 mean level of the sea and 16 below high-water mark. In the bottom of a tank 

 three miles distant from this exactly the same appearances were discovered, as they 

 were in the excavation of the docks by Mr. Jones, and in the clearing out of various 

 tanks on the other side of the river. About the year 1810, the same appearance pre- 

 sented itself in deepening the Laldiggee in Tank Square. At Dum Dum, eight miles 

 further up J, not only trunks of trees but bones and deer's horns were found at a great 

 depth from the surface. At Bombay, again, during a violent fall of rain in 1849, a 

 torrent near Sewree cut through a bank of shells and gravel cemented together into a 

 kind of stone which prevails all up and down over the coast, and to which, from its 

 appearance and position, I have given the flame of Littoral Concrete. At the parti- 

 cular spot referred to the mass was found to be about 6 feet thick"; underneath this, 

 and about 4 feet below high-water mark, was a mass of blue clay, the same in ap- 

 pearance as the sludge now depositing on our shores; this varied from 1 to 3 feet 

 in thickness, and was everywhere full of tree-roots obviously in situ, apparently 

 the mangrove, which always grows betwixt high and low-water mark. The fibres 

 were traceable everywhere through the clay, and where, by reason of their fineness 

 they had become obliterated, casts of them still remained, "in many cases the woody 



* Calcutta Gazette, 1815. f Bengal Hurkaree, April 30, 1851. 



X Calcutta Gazette, 1815. 



