62 PAPERS, ETC. 



the country generally are indebted for the pleasing and 

 varied characters they present ; or whether we enter the 

 field of organic life, and by a more minute examination, 

 study the workings and the ways of Providence, so far as 

 they have been revealed to us, we are enabled to see the 

 handy-work of an all-powerful Designer, who appears to 

 have been superintending all for the comfort and happiness 

 of His creatures, and who when He rested from His work 

 (if in our sense of the word He can be said to do so) 

 could with infinite truth pronounce that all His works 

 were good. 



About the time my attention was re-directed to Geology, 

 an incident occurred at Ilminster which more particularly 

 caused me to consider it a field of no little geological 

 interest. An old school house was being renovated, and 

 two of the boys were amusing themselves with a pebble or 

 nodule they had found in the rubbish. This in rolling from 

 one to the other separated, and by a lucky chance the 

 pieces were looked at and preserved. In the centre, and 

 naturaUy at the point of Separation, was a beautiful fish of 

 the extinet genus Pachycormus. As my visits to Ihninster 

 were then but for a few days at a time, it is only since my 

 residence there, that I have been able to arrive at a 

 general knowledge of the beds and their contents. 



Until very recently these beds, which belong to the 

 Maristone or middle Lias and the npper Lias, were sup- 

 posed to be members of the Inferior Oolite, — which was an 

 error; for not only have they a well marked position between 

 the lower or blue Lias, which is found at Twerton and in 

 places near Bath, and the Inferior Oolite, which also has 

 an extensive development there, but they have organic 

 remains peculiarly their own, and altogether distinct fi'om 

 those of either formation. Some confusion may arise in 



