104 GEOLOGY OF THE ISLE OF WIGHT. 



probably opened in the glass sands of the Barton Series, but no 

 section can now be seen. 



From this point eastwtird no sections occur till Newport is 

 reached. Here the brick-yard near St. John's Church shows at its 

 southern end sand, with the bedding vertical. Wells in Ehn Grove 

 reach the same bed and a house at the corner of Elm Grove and 

 the main road, is built on the site of an old sand pit. 



From Newport to Downend nothing is seen of the strata, the 

 slope being much masked by a wash of clay and flints from the 

 hijiher s;round to the south. At Downend, however, the beds 

 were well seen in a small pit in Saltmoor Copse, where clay 

 rests on a bed of pebbles overlying fine buff and red sand, the 

 whole dipping north-north-east at 80°. The pebble bed, which 

 perhaps forms the base of the Bracklesham Beds, is apparently 

 only 150 feet above the London Clay. The Bagshot Beds must 

 therefore have rapidly thinned out eastward, or else the beds of 

 pebbles come in on different horizons in different parts of the 

 Island. As the position of this pit necessitated the cartage 

 uphill over a bad road of the sand needed in the brick-yard, it was 

 pointed out by one of the writers that the same bed would be 

 found close to the kilns, underlying the brick-earth. The pro- 

 prietor has consequently opened a new sand pit since the survey 

 was made, and probably the section above described will now be 

 overgrown. 



At Brading Station the sands are again seen, and they re-appear 

 in the bluffs on the eastern side of the Yar, but without any clear 

 section. A few chains further east, close to Longlands, a pit 

 shows a dip of 95° — i.e. reversed 5° — to the north-east. 



Very little is yet known of the fossils of the Lower Bagshot 

 Beds in the Isle of Wight, except the plants, for it is doubtful 

 whether any other organic remains besides elytra of beetles have 

 been found in this series. 



On the Floka of Alum Bay. By Me. J. Starkie 

 Gardner, F.L.S., F.G.S. 



The plant remains were found in a pocket or lenticular 

 thickening of a seam of fine white pipe-clay in the midst of the 

 Lower Bagshot Sands. They consist principally of most delicate 

 impressions of leaves, rarely presenting traces of colour, and giving 

 little indication of their texture when living. They lie with the 

 planes of bedding and are rarely twisted or rolled. The leaflets 

 of compound leaves, of which there are many, are almost always 

 detached, though a few specimens exist in which they still adhere 

 to the axis. With the leaves are twigs of a conifer, shreds of 

 fan-palm and reed, small leguminous pods, drupes and other bodies 

 too decomposed for identification, and very rarely, a flower like 



