558 Geological Society. 
silia parvula, Helix cellaria, H.plebeium, H. arbustorum, H. rotundata, 
Bulimus lubricus, and a small Planorbis, all recent shells. 
The vertebre, M. Agassiz says, belong decidedly to the Squalide 
or shark family, perhaps to the genus Lamna. The one is a caudal 
and the other an abdominal vertebra, each about a quarter of an inch 
in diameter. They are in such a state of preservation, and of such a 
colour as might be expected in bones preserved in loess, and as they 
were in a bed of fine loam in which there were no extraneous fossils, 
nor any fragments of rock washed out of other formations, there is 
no reason to suspect that they could have been derived from the ter- 
tiary molasse; and M. Agassiz also states that he has seen nothing 
like them in the molasse of Switzerland, It may seem very extraor- 
dinary that the first remains of fossil fish obtained from this freshwater 
silt should belong to a marine genus, but M. Agassiz has informed 
Mr. Lyell that both in the Senegal and the Amazon certain species 
of the shark and skate families (Squalus and Raia, Linn.) have been 
known to ascend to the distance of several hundred miles from the 
ocean, and analogous facts are referred to in Marcgrave and Piso’s 
Natural History of India. 
A notice on the occurrence of selenite in the sands of the plastic 
clay at Bishopstone near Herne Bay, by William Richardson, Esq., 
F.G.S., was lastly read. 
The perpendicular cliff in which the selenite occurs is about a hun- 
dred feet in height, and consists of the following strata : 
Vegetable mould. 
Reddish marl or brick earth........ 5 feet. 
Mondontclaysy SSF et 20 to 30 — 
Sand and sandstone.............. 60 — 
The selenite is found in the sand, which, as far as the author could 
determine, contains no iron pyrites or lime except in a few well-de- 
fined lines of testaceous remains. The superjacent clay abounds in 
pyrites, and is thickly studded with transparent crystals of sulphate of 
lime, but noconnexion could be traced between the two deposits, and 
the sands for five or six feet underlying the clay contain no selenite. 
January 6, 1836.—A notice on the transportation of rocks by ice, 
extracted from a letter of Capt. Bayfield, R.N., addressed to Charles 
Lyell, Esq., P.G.S., was first read. 
Capt. Bayfield says that both on the lakes of Canada and in the 
St. Lawrence he has seen fragmentary rocks carried by ice. The St. 
Lawrence is low in winter, and the loose ice accumulating on the ex- 
tensive shoals which line each side of the river is frozen into a solid 
mass, being exposed to a temperature sometimes 30° below zero. 
Theshoals are thickly strewed with boulders, which become entangled 
in the ice ; and in the spring, when the river rises from the melting 
of the snow, the packs are floated off, frequently conveying the boul- 
ders for great distances. It is also well known that stones are car- 
ried by the ice. Anchors laid down within high-water mark to secure 
vessels hauled on shore for the winter, are cut out of the ice on the 
approach of spring, or they would be carried away. In 1834 the 
Gulnare’s bower-anchor, weighing half a ton, was transported some 
