66 Geological Society. 



Whatever may be the geological value of the argument, we have 

 to thank the author for the trouble he has taken to put on record 

 all that he knows about this prehistoric man, and for the minute 

 description and excellent plates (by Erxleben) of the calvarium, 

 lower jaw, and teeth (plates i., ii., and iii.), and the femur (pi. iv.) 

 of this ancient representative of the aborigines formerly living on 

 the old Thames bank. 



PROCEEDINGS OE LEARNED SOCIETIES. 



GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



November 5, 18SE— Prof. T. G. Bonney, D.Sc, LL.D., F.R.S., 

 President, in the Chair. 



The following communications were read : — 



1. " On a new Deposit of Pliocene Age at St. Erth, 15 miles east 

 of the Land's End, Cornwall." By S. V. Wood, Esq., F.G.S. 



The deposit described in this paper occurs about 5 miles north- 

 east of Penzance, and consists of a tenacious blue clay with shells, 

 resting on sand, and passing upwards into a yellow unfossiliferous 

 clay, which is overlain unconformably by the earth with angular 

 fragments, under which the ancient beaches of the British Channel 

 (with which beaches, however, the deposit now described has no 

 connection) are buried. It has been exca , \ ated for the underlying 

 sand at intervals during the last fifty years, but has been disused since 

 1881-S2, when it was temporarily worked to supply the yellow 

 part of the clay for the Penzance dock-works. 



The author has got together, partly from correspondents in Corn- 

 wall and partly from his own researches in clay consigned to him, 

 upwards of 40 species of Mollusca, inclusive of a few of which only 

 fragments have as yet occurred, and of several minute species. 

 Among these, besides some that are apparently altogether new, are 

 some particularly characteristic species of the Eed Crag not known 

 living, such as Gyprceci {Trivia) avellana, Sow. ; Melampus pyrami- 

 dalis, Sow.; and Nassa granulata, Sow. (or else N. yranifera, 

 Dujardin), as well as other characteristic Crag species that still live, 

 but not north of the coast of Spain, such as Turritella triplicata, 

 Brocchi (T. incrassata, Sow.), and Ringieula buccinea, Brocchi. 



The most interesting feature of the fauna, however, consists in 

 the six species of JSkissa that the deposit has hitherto yielded, of 

 which all but one, JV r . granulata, Sow. (or granifera, Dujardin), are 

 iinknown from any formation of Northern Europe, and occur, 

 whether in the living or fossil state, only in the southern half of 

 Europe*. One of these is Nassa mutabilis. Linne, which now lives 



* K. conqlnhata, a species of a group near to that of mutabilis, has occurred 

 in the Ked Crag ; but, so far as the author is aware, neither that shell, nor 

 any of the group to which it belongs, has occurred in any other formation of 

 Northern Europe. 



