46 Mr. A. Bell on the Fauna of the Upper Tertiartes. 



favourable opportunities presenting themselves last summer 

 and autumn, I was enabled to add materially to these lists ; 

 and as tlie results prove the deposit to be unique as regards the 

 fauna (which, as pointed out by the above gentlemen, had a 

 southern facies), a detailed description of the whole may not 

 be unworthy of a place in the ' Annals and Magazine of 

 Natural History,' prefaced by a few words indicative of the 

 position of the deposit itself. 



Seldom visible, it extends in patches along the shore of the 

 Selsey peninsula, from Bracklesham to Pagham, with a slight 

 extension inland and a greater one seawards. It is capped by 

 a clay full of ice-borne boulders of all sizes and formations, 

 some of them being of French origin, others of the far west of 

 England (none of these, as far as I can find, bear traces of 

 the sti'ife so common on rocks of the true glacial period). 

 This in turn is overlain by a water-worn gravel containing 

 marine or estuarine shells, con'esponding in age to the '' ele- 

 phant-gravel " of Dr. Mantell. Above this is a deposit of 

 Loss, the ordinaiy vegetable soil covering all. Speaking of 

 the Loss, I may say, par parenth^se, that many English geo- 

 logists confound this with ordinaiy fluviatile deposits, forget- 

 ting that the Loss may be identified by its fauna, which is 

 purely terrestrial ; and, judged by this standard, the only 

 English localities for this deposit are the present, which 

 reaches nearly to the Goodwood Hills, some patches in the 

 Medway gravels, and another on the shore at Swale Cliff, 

 near Heme Bay. 



The Mud-deposit itself is composed of a gi"ey sandy mud, 

 full of organisms and small stones, and, when last seen by 

 myself, was covered by a layer of bright-yellow sand, and 

 that again by the ordinary rolled shingle and sand of the 

 shore. It was only by digging through this tliat I could 

 reach the bed beloAv half-tide. 



The presence of a large river having access to the bay or 

 estuary would account for the mammals, land-shells, pieces of 

 wood, &c. found intermixed with the marine remains. 



Of the 140 shells, 30 do not exist nearer than the west of 

 England, the Channel Islands, or North Spain, G or 8 not 

 passing this side of Gibraltar, all being littoral (or sublittoral) 

 species. As British quaternary fossils, 42 are jKxniliar to 

 Selsey (unless otherwise mentioned), and 20 others probably 

 find here their earliest place in British geological history. 



The recent South-European forms are marked f, the pecu- 

 liar Selsey fossils *. 



