WEALDEN BEDS. 13 



Descending Section betioeen Coioleaze and Barnes Chines 



Ft. In. 



Sandstone, very hard where washed by the waves, with nodules 

 and veins of iron-pyrites and pebbles of clay. Cyrena 

 abundant - - - - - - -2 



Yellow sand and soft bright-yellow sandstone, current-bedded, 



and ripple-marked ; carbonaceous in places - - - 19 



Grey and black shales, the up})er part interlaminated with much 

 sand in Cowleaze Chine ; a band, crowded with Paludina and 

 Unio near the top, and another with Cyrena and Paludina near 

 the bottom .--_-.. 



White sand and clay, with lignite .... 



Current-bedded white rock . . _ . . 



Reddish-blue sand and clay, with bone-fragments {Hypsilophodon 

 Bed) . - 1 .... . 



Red and variegated marls ------ 



White and yellow sand with tree-trunks, passing westwards into a 

 sandstone 15 feet thick, and then splitting up and fingering out 

 among red marls near the top of the cliff - - - 9 



Blue and purple marls, &c. (see p. 15). 



This locality has long been celebrated for its reptilian bones. In 

 1849, according to Mr. Hulke,* a block, containing a considerable 

 portion of a reptilian skeleton, was found on the shore about 

 100 yards west of Cowleaze Chine. The skeleton Avas described 

 as a young Iguanodon Mantclli by Professor Owen.-j- Another 

 specimen was discovered and described under the same name by 

 the Rev. W. Fox in 1868.J These fossils were afterwards proved 

 by Professor Huxley to be the bones of a new Dinosaurian, to 

 which he gave the name Hypsilophodon Foxii.§ Subsequently a 

 great part of the skeleton of the reptile was exhumed by 

 Mr. Hulke from the same stratum.* The bed, which rests directlv 

 on the variegated marls, forms the floor of Cowleaze Chine, and 

 rises to the top of the cliff near Barnes High. 



In 1874 the tibia and humerus of a reptile (probably 

 Hyl(Bosaurus) from the same locality were described by Mr. 

 Hulke. The bones occurred " somewhere in the mottled purple 

 and grey clays, therefore in the beds west of Cowleaze Chine, 

 below the IIypsilophodo7i-he(\.'^\\ 



The beds above the thick sandstone of Cowleaze Chine consist 

 almost entirely of shales, Cypridiferous paper-shales, bands of 

 ironstone and limestone, with layers of calcite, or " beef," and con- 

 taining Cyrena, Paludina, and small oysters, occur at various 

 horizons. (Plate III.) Vicarya strombiformis also, associated 

 with Cyrena, is found in crowds at 1, 12, and 30 feet from the 

 top, the appearance of hand -specimens with the two shells being 

 precisely similar to that of specimens in the Museum of Practical 

 Geology from the lowest beds of the Wealden at Burwash Wheel, 

 near Hastings. The total thickness of the Wealden Shales of 

 Atherfield is 192 feet. - 



* Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, vol. sxix. p. .532. 1873. 

 t Palseontographical Society's Publicatious. 

 j Rep. Brit. Assoc, for 1868 (Sections), p. 64. 

 § Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, vol. xxvi. p. 3. 1870. 

 II Ibid., vol. XXX. p. 516. 1874. 



