318 Geological Society :— 
GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 
[Continued from p. 238.] 
February 1, 1860.—Sir C. Lyell, Vice-President, in the Chair, 
The following communications were read :— 
1. “On some Cretaceous Rocks in Jamaica.” By Lucas Barrett, 
Esq., F.G.S., Director of the Geological Survey in Jamaica. 
On the north side of Plantain-Garden River, three miles west of 
Bath, shale and limestone overlie conglomerate. The limestone 
contains Jnoceramus, Hippurites, and Nerinea. Higher up the river 
similar fossiliferous limestone occurs in vertical bands, succeeded 
by conglomerates, which separate it from massive porphyries. 
On the medial ridge of mountains, also, at an elevation of 2500 
feet above the sea, Hippurite-limestone, with black flints containing 
Ventriculites, rests on porphyry and hornblende-rock. These igneous 
rocks are interstratified with shales and conglomerates. 
2. «©On the Occurrence of a mass of Coal in the Chalk of Kent.” 
By R. Godwin-Austen, Esq., F.G.S. 
This piece of coal was met with in cutting the tunnel on the 
Chatham and Dover Railway, between Lydden Hill and Shepherds- 
well. It weighed about 4 cwts., and was 4 feet square, with a thick- 
ness of 4 inches at one part, increasing to 10 inches at another. It was 
imbedded in the chalk, where the latter was free from faults. The 
coal is friable, highly bituminous, and burns readily, with a peculiar 
smell, like that of retino-asphalt. It resembles some of the Wealden 
or Jurassic coals, and is unlike the true coal of the coal-measures. 
Mr. Godwin-Austen stated his belief that during the Cretaceous 
period some beds of lignite or coal of the preceding Jurassic period 
lay near the sea-margin, or along some river, so as to be covered by 
water; and hence portions could be lifted off by ice, and so 
drifted away (like the granitic boulder found in the Chalk at 
Croydon) until the ice was no longer able to support its load. 
3. “On some Fossils from the Grey Chalk near Guildford.” By 
R. Godwin-Austen, Esq., F.G.S. 
In the cast of the body-chamber of a large Nautilus elegans, from 
the Grey Chalk of the Surrey Hills, near Guildford, the author 
found (the specimen having been broken up by frost) some lumps 
of iron-pyrites, and numerous specimens of Aporrhais Parkinsoni, 
with fragments of Turrilites tuberculatus, Ammonites Coupei, A. 
varians, and Inoceramus concentricus. ‘These species are either rare 
in the Grey Chalk or not known to the author as occurring in this 
bed; and he believes that the specimens referred to were accumu- 
lated in the shell of the Nautilus (possibly by the animal having 
taken them as a meal shortly before death) at a different zone of sea- 
depth to that in which the Nautilus and its contents sank and 
became fossilized. Mr. Godwin-Austen referred to these specimens 
as being indicative of the contemporary formation of different 
deposits with their peculiar fossils, at different sea-zones; of the 
transport of the inhabitants of one zone to the deposits of another ; 
and as a possible explanation of the abundance of small angular 
fragments of Mollusks, Echinoderms, and Crustaceans, in the midst 
of the very finest Cretaceous sediment. 
