Phosphatic Deposit at Fotton, in Bedfordshire. 119 



and in places these deposits almost stand on end, through false 

 bedding. They are seven feet thick, and unfossiUferoiis, a good 

 deal resembling the beds below ; but I cannot say they should 

 not be classed with the Gault. A rolled fragment or two of 

 Ammonites hiplex is the only fossil I have found in the rock ; so 

 that it might be Portland Sands but that it is traced to Hunstan- 

 ton, where fossils are more numerous." Mr. Seeley then pro- 

 ceeds to trace the bed to near Potton and Sandy. He evidently 

 at the time he published the above (December 1865) considered 

 the bed to be of the same age as I do, but has since altered his 

 opinion. I shall again have occasion to refer to the second 

 paragraph quoted above. I am not aware that Neithea quinque- 

 costata has ever been found in the Kimmeridge Clay at Wey- 

 mouth or elsewhere. 



II. Mr. Seeley says, " The term conglomerate applied to 

 this bed is calculated to mislead," and gives a definition of what 

 he thinks a conglomerate ought to be. In the paragraph already 

 quoted Mr. Seeley applied this term to the same beds ! I wished 

 to involve the idea he objects to, viz. the denudation of older beds. 



III. I stated that, if Mr. Seeley's views be correct, the term 

 Carstone is inapplicable to the bed. On the idea that the Car- 

 stone at Hunstanton re])resents the Gault and Lower Greensand, 

 he forms his remarkable hypothesis of the Significance of the 

 Sequence of Rocks*. He now restricts the term to the sands 

 of Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, and Norfolk, between the Hunstan- 

 ton Limestone and the Kimmeridge Clay, and says, " But though 

 I abandon the term, I do not abandon the idea," which idea he 

 proceeds to illustrate by a diagram, but does not attempt to 

 prove it ; therefore I will not discuss the merits of it. 



IV. I appear to have misunderstood Mr. Seeley's remarkable 

 expression " the truth is, the ' Sandy nodule bed,' as this bed in 

 the Carstone may be called, reproduces earlier in time the con- 

 ditions of the Cambridge Greensand." I am very sorry; but it 

 may be due to the ambiguity of the sentence tending to mislead. 

 But I am still of opinion that two deposits so different in every 

 respect as the Cambridge Greensand and the sandy conglomerate 

 bed at Potton and elsewhere cannot have been accumulated 

 under similar conditions. Mr. Seeley by no means explains the 

 discrepancies between the two formations indicated in my former 

 paper t, nor does he bring forward a particle of evidence in 

 support of his assumption that both were formed upon a long 

 low shore. 



V. Mr. Seeley ascribes to me the " notable discovery that by 

 soaking six or seven parts of alumina in decomposing animal 



* Geological Magazine, vol. ii. pp. 262-266. 

 t Ann. Nat. Hist. ser. 3. vol. xviii. p. 383. 



