Geological Society, 467 



The external condyle is not only larger and deeper than the inner, 

 but is more prolonged distally— perhaps the most distinctive avian 

 character of the boue. Coh/mbus is the only existing bird to which 

 the fossil makes any approximation, but the resemblance is distant 

 and not suggestive of near affinity, and it is interesting that the 

 Cretaceous birds show so marked an affinity with that type. The 

 resemblances of the Diuosaurian and Crocodilian femora with this 

 type are such that almost every individual feature of the bone can 

 be paralleled in some fossil referable to these groups, but there 

 are no British dinosaurs of so small a size or possessing some of 

 the marked features shown by this bone. 



June 21st, 1899.— W. Whitaker, B.A., F.R.S., 

 President, in the Chair. 



The following communications were read : — 



1. 'On some Ironstone Fossil Nodules of the Lias.' By E A 

 Walford, Esq., F.G.S. 



In the Lias of Oxfordshire some iroustone-nodules are found at 

 the point of contact of the Middle and Upper Lias. ' The Middle 

 Lias stone is compact, crystalline, and absorbent, and contains 

 numerous irregular pyriform bodies,' some of which ' are changed 

 wholly into a form of red hasmatite. These .... bodies have a 

 circular vertical canal or shaft. . . .with the polyp and zooid-cells 

 ranged round in obscure spiral growth. The cells have the 

 areolated structure of the erinoids, or are spiculate of the type 

 figured by Sars in Pennatula. Though in form approaching the 

 Cumacea, the presence of perforated brachial plates, of annulated 

 segments, and of spiculate zooidal cells, places the group between 

 the PennatuJce and the Crinoids. The resistance of the denser 

 structure of the beds of calcareous stems of the rag-beds has 

 caused the beds above and below them to become the lines of 

 drainage, and hence [to become converted] into beds of greater 

 ferruginous concentration.' 



2. ' Additional Notes on the Vertebrate Fauna of the Rock- 

 Fissure at Ightham (Kent).' By E. T. Newton, Esq., F.R.S., F.G.S. 



Since the previous paper on the Ightham-fissure fauna published 

 by this Society about five years ago, numerous additional specimens 

 have been obtained, not only by Mr, Lewis Abbott, but also by 

 Mr. Frank Corner and Mr. Kennard. 



The present paper gives a very brief account of the new forms 

 which have been discovered and identified during the last five years 

 with remarks upon some important additional remains of Mustela 

 rohusta, and of the Spermophilus which is now referred to the 

 species erythrogenoides of Falconer. This paper adds some 19 new 

 forms to the fauna of the Ightham fissure. 



