290 
NATURE 
[May 23, 1912 
bearers are cast upon the coffin in the grave to 
get rid of the impurity of death. Miss Canziani 
does not seem to have found, or noted here, 
charms or folk-medicine, or the evil-eye belief 
(which is prevalent at least in Rumilly). 
We have left ourselves no space to dwell on the 
characteristic melodies or the songs, but these 
present less novelty, as MM. A. van Gennep, 
Tiersot, Ritz, and Servettaz have all published 
' collections from Savoy. 
Miss Canziani tells us that the distinctive village 
costumes which she depicts so brilliantly are 
gradually disappearing, that the fays are abandon- 
ing their mountain homes, and that the old 
legends are being forgotten. We must therefore 
congratulate ourselves that the brush and pen of 
an enthusiastic and painstaking recorder have 
preserved for us so much of antique beauty, 
poetry, and custom before they fade away for ever. 
As Ree 
THE GEOLOGY OF SELSEY BILL. 
Selsey Bill: Historic and Prehistoric. By Edw. 
Heron-Allen. Pp. xvi+404+maps and plates. 
(London: Duckworth and Co., 1911.) Price 
42 2s. net. 
The Recent and Fossil Foraminifera of the Shore- 
sands at Selsey Bill, Sussex. By Edw. Heron- 
Allen and Arthur Earland. (Reprinted from the 
Journal of the Royal Microscopical Society.) 
(London: Printed by Wm. Clowes and Sons, 
Ltd., 1908-1911.) 
ELSEY BILL, the south-western promontory 
a of Sussex, is classic ground to the geologist 
on account of the fossiliferous Middle Eocene 
deposits (or Bracklesham beds) which are ex- 
posed along its shores. It is therefore appropriate 
that any work on this region should devote con- 
siderable space to its geology, and Mr. Heron- 
Allen’s sumptuous volume now before us includes 
no fewer than six chapters dealing with various 
aspects of the subject. Realising the needs of the 
general reader, Mr. Heron-Allen does even more 
than refer to the geological formations which can 
be actually studied within the area; for he attempts 
a brief sketch of the successive changes in geo- 
graphy and conditions which have occurred in 
southern Britain since the beginning of geological 
time, and alludes to certain hypotheses and 
general principles which are likely to excite 
interest. Following this, he gives a most useful 
description, illustrated by a map, of the series of 
fossiliferous Bracklesham beds exposed on the 
beach, based partly on the work of the Geological 
Survey, partly on his own observations made in 
association with Mr. Thomas Woodland. 
NO. 2221, VOL. 89] 
The successive beds dip very gently from the 
western shore under the peninsula in a_north- 
easterly direction, reappearing on the east side of 
the Bill; and they are covered partly by patches 
of Pleistocene deposits, partly by variously mov- 
ing modern banks of sand and shingle, which 
render the study of them difficult. Good figures 
of some of the typical fossils occupy three plates, 
and will be useful to a beginner; but the nomen- 
clature adopted in these illustrations and in the 
long lists added to the geological description will 
not always satisfy the modern worker. 
Mr. Heron-Allen’s new observations relate to 
the Pleistocene and other more recent deposits, 
which he has evidently studied with great dili- 
gence. His description of a fresh-water clay from 
which he obtained the remains of a young mam- 
moth in April, 1909, is especially interesting, and 
is illustrated by a plate of photographs of the 
lower molars and some bones. His records of 
discoveries of flint implements both of Palzolithic 
and Neolithic types are also important; and the 
photographs of a “Mesolithic chisel”? found 
beneath the Coombe rock on top of the raised 
beach are especially noteworthy. It is curious 
that no relics of the Bronze Age have hitherto 
been met with, though those of the Iron Age are 
abundant. 
Mr. Heron-Allen has also worked industriously 
at the collection and identification of the Foramini- 
fera which occur in patches on the beach. Alto- 
gether he has discovered about four hundred 
species, of which a large proportion agree closely 
with forms now common in Torres Straits and on 
the Great Barrier Reef of Australia. Unfortun- 
ately, these Foraminifera are of very different 
ages—some Cretaceous, some Tertiary, and some 
recent—all mixed, and it is not easy to separate 
them into groups; but in association with Mr. 
Arthur Earland, Mr. Heron-Allen has contributed 
an interesting series of papers on the collection 
to the Journal of the Royal Microscopical Society. 
These papers have now been reprinted and issued 
as a separate volume, in which there is an ap- 
pendix on the preparation and study of Foramini- 
fera from the Chalk. 
The greater part of Mr. Heron-Allen’s work on 
Selsey Bill deals, of course, with history and 
statistics, with which we are not concerned, and 
his natural history notes are necessarily brief. 
He is, however, to be congratulated on his suc- 
cessful effort to give both an interesting and a 
trustworthy account of the geology, which should 
stimulate local observers to devote more attention 
to the Bracklesham fossils and the Coombe rock 
than these have received during recent years. 
A. SaeWe 
