46 Mr. A. Bell on the Fauna of the Upper Terttat'ies, 



favourable opportunities presenting themselves last summer 

 and autumn, I was enabled to add materially to these lists ; 

 and as the results prove the deposit to be unique as regards the 

 fauna (which, as pointed out by the above gentlemen, had a 

 southern fticies), a detailed descri])tion of the whole may not 

 be unworthy of a place in the ' Annals and Magazine of 

 Natural History,' prefaced by a few words indicative of the 

 position of the deposit itself. 



Seldom visible, it extends in patches along the shore of the 

 Selsey peninsula, from Bracklesham to Pagham, with a slight 

 extension inland and a greater one seawards. It is capped by 

 a clay full of ice-borne boulders of all sizes and formations, 

 some of them being of French origin, others of the far west of 

 England (none of these, as far as I can lind, bear traces of 

 the stria3 so common on rocks of the true glacial period). 

 This in turn is overlain by a water-worn gravel containing 

 marine or estuarine shells, corresponding in age to the " ele- 

 phant-gravel" of Dr. Mantell. Above this is a deposit of 

 Loss, the ordinary vegetable soil covering all. Speaking of 

 the Loss, I may s^aj, par parenth<isej that many English geo- 

 logists confound this with ordinary Huviatile deposits, forget- 

 ting that the Loss may be idcntitied by its fauna, which is 

 purely terrestrial ; and, judged by this standard, the only 

 English localities for this deposit ai'e the present, which 

 reaches nearly to the Goodwood Hills, some patches in the 

 Med way gravels, and another on the shore at Swale Cliff, 

 near Heme Bay. 



The Mud-deposit itself is composed of a grey sandy mud, 

 full of organisms and small stones, and, when last seen by 

 myself, was covered by a layer of bright-yellow sand, and 

 that again by the ordinary rolled shingle and sand of the 

 shore. It was only by digging through this that I could 

 reach the bed below half-tide. 



The presence of a large river having access to tlie bay or 

 estuary would account for the mammals, land-shells, pieces of 

 wood, &c. found intermixed with the marine remains. 



Of the 140 shells, 30 do not exist nearer than the west of 

 England, the Channel Islands, or North Spain, 6 or 8 not 

 passing this side of Gibraltar, all being littorju (or sublittoral) 

 species. As British quaternary fossils, 42 are peculiar to 

 Selsey (unless otherwise mentioned), and 20 others probably 

 iind here their earliest place in British geological history. 



The recent South-European forms are marked f, the pecu- 

 liar Selsey fossils *. 



