OSBORNE BEDS. 



153 



West of Binstead Point, thirty feet of red and green marls are 

 displayed at tlie base of the cliff, supporting hard light-green marl 

 with small white concretions ; above this succeeds a thin Viand of 

 decayed shells (forming a soft shelly limestone, rhe greater portion 

 of which is composed of fragments of bivalve shells), with a sort 

 of laminated appearance. The calcareous band contains commi- 

 nuted Cyrena, Limima longiscata, Unio, Melania excavata, Melan- 

 opsis, Planorhis discits, &c., with two feet of interstratified sands 

 and sandstones and grits above it, which are probably the equiva- 

 lents of the silicious beds beneath the Bembridge Limestone at 

 the Binstead quarries. Two feet of soft sand complete the section. 



Fig. 50. 



Section at Binstead. 



a. Gravel. 

 6. Sand, 

 c. Grits. 



rf. Marl. 

 e. Grit. 



At Ryde House a ripple-marked flaggy sandstone (probably 

 bed e in the above woodcut) immediately overlies the fish bed. 



At Binstead Point the upper calcareous portion of the thick 

 bed at Nettlestone comes to the shore, capped with green marls, 

 and assumes the character of a hard and compact white limestone 

 with Melania excavata. Westward of the Point it forms a ledge 

 on the shore, which strikes nearly due west in the direction of 

 Osborne. About a quarter of a mile east of the Point, sandstone 

 appears, dipping 10° W. of S. at 5°, Gravel and the enclosed 

 nature of the ground now conceal the strata for a considerable 

 distance : but a few scattered blocks of grit lie under the sea-wall 

 opposite the first houses west of the town of Hyde, and again 

 midway between Pyde Pier and Apley. 



At the west comer of Apley Wood a bed of calcareous sand- 

 stone, about four feet thick (full, in places, of casts of Paludina, 

 associated with numerous large Unio, Limncea, Planorhis, and 

 occasional bones of Turtle), appears on the shore beneath the sea- 

 wall. The shells, which are as much crowded as in Sussex 

 marble, are sometimes filled with a greenish marl, the rock itself 

 being somewhat ferruginous, and of a pale ochreous colour. It 

 rests upon ragstone similar to that at Nettlestone, ten feet or more 

 thick, under which sandstone, in layers eighteen inches thick, con- 

 tinues to a depth of ten or eleven feet. Under all lies a strong 



