A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 35 



41 Birds of Great Britain." But I was soon called to 

 another, a more enduring piece of work. Previous 

 to the third decade of the nineteenth century, very 

 little was known respecting the vegetation of the 

 Oolitic age, but the discovery of a small esturian 

 deposit of plants in Gristhorpe Bay made great 

 additions to our information on this subject. There 

 have always been discussions respecting the share 

 which the two cousins, William Bean and my 

 father, were entitled to claim in this discovery; 

 that the subsequent development of it was pro- 

 secuted chiefly by them is indisputable. In March 

 1832 the publication of Lindley and Hutton's " Fossil 

 " Flora of Great Britain " was commenced ; and shortly 

 afterwards Mr. Dunn, then secretary to the Literary 

 and Philosophical Society of Scarborough, received 

 a letter from Mr. Hutton, inquiring if there was any 

 one in the town capable of figuring and describing 

 the new plants of the Gristhorpe deposit. Mr. 

 Dunn brought this letter to me, and urged me to 

 undertake the task. I did so, and contributed to 

 the pages of that work almost as long as its 

 quarterly parts continued to be issued. At length 

 the issue ceased, because, as Mr. Lindley himself 

 told me, the geologists did not give the work that 

 financial support which he had hoped, whilst he as 

 botanist did not feel called upon to spend his money 

 upon a publication that, after all, was mainly a 

 geological one. So far as my own communications 

 to it are concerned, some of the palaeontologists 



