JELL 7 STRICKLAND FIT TON. 4 1 1 



to the north-east, referring them, as Smith had done, to the iron- 

 sand, a group in which he, like Smith, included the Hastings sands. 

 At this time, however (1822), the term 'iron-sand' included 

 portions both of lower greensand and Hastings sands, the complete 

 distinction between these two groups not being as yet reached. 



Dr. Fitton, whose memoirs on the greensands and other strata 

 below the chalk have preserved the honour of England in regard 

 to the geology of some parts of the secondary rocks, appears, as 

 early as 1827, to have traced Purbeck deposits at one point beyond 

 the northern outcrop of the chalk-hills of Buckinghamshire, viz. 

 at Whitchurch, near Aylesbury, where white fissile calcareous beds 

 overlie the Portland rocks, and contain Cyclades and Cypridse. 



In the year 1831 I was the companion of my great pre- 

 decessor, Buckland, and his friend Conybeare, in an examination 

 of the strata in Shotover Hill and Brill Hill. We traced in succes- 

 sion the members of the coralline oolite and Portland oolite groups, 

 and searched in vain for organic remains amidst the ochraceous 

 sands of the uppermost deposits of these hills. 



In 1833 (Dec. 4), Hugh E. Strickland, then beginning to un- 

 fold those qualities which so much endeared him to his many 

 friends, sent to Mr. Greenough a notice of the occurrence, on 

 Shotover Hill, of imperfect casts of fossils which he believed to 

 belong to the fresh-water genus Paludina. They were discovered 

 by one of my earliest friends, the Rev. H. Jelly, of Bath, in a 

 sand-pit on the brow of the hill, much above the level of the Port- 

 land rocks d . 



Dr. Fitton's great * Memoir on the Strata below the Chalk e ' 

 refers to the same fact, adding, that the shells appear to belong 

 to five species, three like Paludina, one small bivalve like Cyclas, 

 and one larger bivalve like Unio ; but, according to Dr. Fitton, the 

 specimens found were all too imperfect to admit of precise deter- 

 mination, and were none of them so unlike some of the species 

 which occur in the lower greensand as absolutely to exclude them 

 from that formation f . 



In 1847 I accompanied Mr. Strickland in a walk up Shotover 



c Geol. Proc., June 1827, i. p. 26. 



d Geol. Proc. ii. p. 6. The specimens are preserved in the Geological Society's 

 Museum. 



e Geol. Trans., Second Series, iv. 1836. f Memoir, p. 275. 



