HILL: GEOLOGY OF JAMAICA, 137 
that “tho fauna of the West Indian seas in those remote times appears 
to have been as remote from that of the shores of the United States as 
it has lately been shown by Mr. Bland to be at the present day."! 
FossiLs or run MONTPELIER WHITE LIMESTONE. 
As a rule, the Tertiary White Limestones which succeed the Cambridge 
beds, although almost entirely of organic origin, are singularly free from 
Macroscopic fossils, especially the lower half of the Series. There is 
a current impression that the white limestones, as a whole, are richly 
fossiliferous, owing to the fact that many shells from the Bowden horizon 
have been described as coming from the * White Limestones of Jamaica,” 
but, as we have shown, the Bowden beds are not White Limestones, but 
Sravels and argillaceous marls. De la Beche notes many shells from the 
hite Limestones, but all came either from the underlying Cambridge 
beds or the overlying Post-Tertiary White Limestones of the Coastal 
Series which wo have separated from the true Tertiary White Lime- 
Stones, 
Minute search for such fossils in bundreds of exposures has generally 
been without success. Except the beds at Port Antonio, which are of 
Cambridge affinities, the Moneague beds and a few places in the Bog 
alk section, the great mass of the White Limestones are barren of such 
Temaing so far as we have observed them. This noteworthy absence 
May in some instances be due to secondary alteration of the rocks, but, 
m general, it is owing to the fact that the material originated at depths 
beyond that in which the abundant littoral molluscan life occurred, 
otwithstanding the absence of macroscopic remains, the Montpelier 
beds, which compose the lower 500 feet of the White Limestones, are 
Almost entirely made up of foraminiferal remains, — Orbitoides, Num- 
Duling, and Miliolidoo at the base, grading up into Globigerinal deposits. 
hese beds are very free from remains of shallow water corals, — a fact 
Which further supports the theory that they were deposited at great 
depths beyond that at which these organisms could flourish. The great 
Subsidence of this epoch undoubtedly must have extinguished most of 
the dense molluscan life, which does not appear again until the Bowden 
poch, 
Radiolaria are raro in the Jamaican rocks, our specimens from the 
Ontpelier beds usually showing only a few traces of them, — certainly 
1 T. C. Moore, Quart. Jour. Geol. Soc. London, Vol. IX, p. 131. 
