206 PETRIFACTIONS AND THEIR TEACHINGS. CHAP. III. 



Wealden formation a name happily suggested by my friend 

 J. P. Martin, Esq. of Pulborough, to designate this remarkable 

 series of fluviatile deposits. 



PECULIAR CHARACTER OF THE ORGANIC REMAINS. The 

 most novel and extraordinary fossil remains which I obtained 

 from the locality above described, and from other quarries 

 around Horsham, Bolney, and Crawley, to which my researches 

 extended, were the fragments of enormous mammalian-like 

 bones, and the stems, branches, and foliage of terrestrial vege- 

 tables, and fluviatile mollusks ; the univalves resembling the 

 river-snails, or paludinse, and the bivalves the fresh-water 

 mussels or uniones. These phenomena were quite unex- 

 pected; for although, so far back as Woodward's time, the 

 shells composing the limestones commonly known as the 

 Sussex and Petworth marbles were supposed to be river-shells, 

 yet that opinion had long been given up, and the whole series 

 of strata forming the tract of country between the North and 

 South Downs were regarded as unequivocally marine, and an 

 integral part of the Cretaceous formation ; the sands and 

 sandstones being grouped together under the name of the 

 Iron Sand; and several species of ammonites, nautili, and 

 other deep-sea shells, were figured and described by Mr. 

 Sowerby, and other eminent naturalists of that period, (1820,) 

 as characteristic fossils of that group of deposits. 



In that excellent work, Messrs. Conybeare and Phillips' 

 " Outlines of the Geology of England and Wales," published 

 in 1822, there is an admirable review of the geological rela- 

 tion of the " Iron Sands'" below the chalk, according to the 

 state of geological knowledge at that time, and which will be 

 found in accordance with the account above given. 1 



DISCOVERY OF THE FLUVIATILE ORIGIN OF THE STRATA. 

 For many years previously to my discovery of organic remains 

 in the Wealden strata, I had diligently collected the fossils 

 from the chalk, chalk -marl, gait, &c. around Lewes, where I 

 then resided, and had acquired a tolerably extensive suite of 

 the usual teeth, shells, corals, and other zoophytes of the 



1 " Outlines of the Geology of England and Wales, by the Kev. W. D. 

 Conybeare, and William Phillips, 1822," pp. 136140. This volume 

 appeared about three months before my first work on the Geology of 

 Sussex, " The Fossils of the South Downs." 



