278 OUR COMMON BRITISH FOSSILS. 



ground to him apart from the fact that it is the 

 Queen's home), and there he finds an abundance of 

 fossil shells, and possibly some of the Chara fruits 

 which Sir Charles Lyell made famous. Limnea 

 longiscata, Paludina lenta (which continued to live 

 right on to the time when the Norwich Crag was 

 formed in the later Pliocene age), Melania excavata, 

 Planorbis, etc. all are to be found at Osborne in 

 profuse abundance. At Bembridge and Headon, in 

 the marls and shell-limestones, we have more than 

 enough of Melania tttrritissima, Cerilhium mutabile, 

 Cyrena pulchra, Ostrea Vectensis ; land shells, such as 

 Helix globosa, Bulimus ellipticus (actually forming 

 a limestone by its remains), and fresh-water shells, 

 such as Limnea and the beautiful Planorbis discus. 



With the exception of the Hempstead strata 

 (Isle of Wight), we have only doubtful and scanty 

 remnants of Miocene deposit in Great Britain, and 

 these are hardly worth mentioning so far as fossil 

 collecting is concerned. 



Perhaps the most interesting of them in this 

 respect are found in Suffolk, especially in the neigh- 

 bourhood of Felixstowe a pretty sea-side watering- 

 place and that of Ipswich. This is a splendid 

 county for Pliocene fossils, locally and indeed 

 generally known as " crag." The cliffs at the former 

 place are simply masses of shells, and in the district 

 there are plenty of " coprolite pits " places where 

 the small phosphatic nodules (formerly believed to 



