Geological Society of London. Yll 



Murchison's notice of a specimen of the Oar's rock, wliich stands In the 

 sea off the coast of Sussex, nine miles south of Little Hampton, shews it 

 to agree with some of the rocks in the greensand or Portland beds ; and 

 its thus belonging to the strata below the chalk falls in with the remark 

 of its occurring between the parallels of disturbance which traverse the 

 Wealden of Sussex on the north, and the Isle of Wight on the south ; 

 for these disturbances and other facts agree well with the notion of pro- 

 truded strata between. The wealden strata themselves have been ob- 

 served by Mr Malcolmson, at Linksfield, near Elgin. It is remarkable, 

 that these strata had already, very unexpectedly, been found by Messrs 

 Murchison and Sedgwick in the Isle of Skye. 



I have also to notice Dr Buckland's account of the discovery of fossil 

 fishes in the Bagshot Sands at Goldworth Hill, near Guilford. As these 

 fossils resemble those of the London clay, Mr Lyell's opinion that the 

 Bagshot Sands were deposited during the eocene period is strongly con- 

 firmed. 



The fresh- water beds of the Isle of Wight, which had already supplied 

 specimens of some of the Pachydermata of the Paris basin, have furnished 

 an additional supply of rich fossils, which have been examined by Mr 

 Owen. He has found them to contain bones of four species of Palseo- 

 therium, and two species of Anoplotherium ; also a jaw of the Chaeropo- 

 tamus, a fossil genus established by Cuvier ; and another jaw closely re- 

 sembling that of a Musk Deer, which Mr Owen refers to the genus Dico- 

 bune, a genus also established by Cuvier upon the fossils of the Paris 

 basin. Such discoveries falling in with the conclusions obtained by the 

 researches of previous philosophers respecting the tertiary period of the 

 earth's history, and supplying what they left imperfect, cannot fail to give 

 us great confidence in the results of those investigations, and to enhance 

 our admiration of the sagacity which opened to us this path of dis- 

 coverj'. 



Dr Mitchell gave an account of his attempts to trace the drift from the 

 chalk, and strata below the chalk, as it exists in the counties of Norfolk, 

 Suffolk, Essex, Cambridge, Huntingdon, Bedford, Hertford, and Middle- 

 sex. This drift I had occasion to notice in my Address last year, in re- 

 ference to Mr Clarke's elaborate geological survey of Suffolk ; and I then 

 stated that this diluvial deposit is known in the neighbourhood of Cam- 

 bridge by the name of brown clay. Dr Mitchell has shewn that this de- 

 posit is of greater extent than we were before aware. But still to deter- 

 mine with precision its principal masses, total extent, and local modifi- 

 cations, would be a valuable service to the geology of the eastern part of 

 our island. 



As my order requires mc to take the igneous after the sedimentary 

 rocks, I must here notice Dr Fleming's " Remarks on the Trap Rocks of 

 Fife," which he distinguishes into three epochs ; — those of the eastern 

 extremity of the oolites, wliich arc variously associated with the old red 

 sandstone ; — those which run from St Andrews to Stirling, which were 



VOL. XXVII. NO. Lin, JVLY 1839. M 



