70 REPORT—1868. 
mollusea, &c.; and, finally, let it be covered over by a deposit of sand, which 
would naturally be, in some measure at least, subjected to more or less denudation, 
and we have what seems to me an explanation of the formation of the ferruginous 
sandstone encircling the town of Northampton. Thus we have, in the first place, 
accompanying a great subsidence, the deposition of deep-water shells, and the con- 
version of the sand into so-called ironstone, often containing the casts of shells; then 
a certain amount of elevation, accompanied by the deposition of shells inhabiting 
shallower water; then sandstone with nodules of clay and ironstone and small 
pebbles, together with estuary shells*, ripple-marks, traces of serpulee, and other 
marine annelides—of which latter, ripple-marks &c., there is a very fine specimen 
belonging to S. Sharp, Esq., in the Northampton Museum ; and finally, layers of 
waved bands of sand at times apparently pure from any trace of iron, and eyi- 
dently the result of shallow water. 
On the Tertiary Deposits of Victoria. By H. M. Jenxrns. 
On the Noted Slate-veins of Festiniog. By S. Junxrns. 
On the Oldest Beds of the Crags. By E. Ray Lanxester. 
In the county of Suffolk, lying on the London clay, wherever the Red Crag or the 
Coralline Crag is found, with few exceptions, is a bed from half a foot to three feet 
thick, of large and small nodules, bones, and teeth. All the nodules are rounded 
and waterworn, and so are the teeth and bones. They are evidently the members 
of an ancient stone beach, and form what the author calls the Sutiolk Bone-bed. 
Most of the nodules are bits of rounded and worn clay, indurated with phosphate 
of lime, for which the bed is worked, and by a misnomer this deposit has been 
called the Coprolite-bed. The hits of clay which form the so-called coprolite are 
bits of London clay, just as in Cambridgeshire bits of gault and of colitic clay are 
similarly phosphatized and worked as coprolite. Besides these nodules, the Suf- 
folk bone-bed contains two distinct sorts of mammalian remains. those of terrestrial 
mammals (Mastodon, Rhinoceros, Tapirus, Ursus) and those of whales. In many 
of its features this bone-bed is similar to Mr. Gunn’s stone-bed, containing, as it 
does, nodwes and mammalian remains. The terrestrial mammals in both were 
washed, no doubt, from the same land-surface; but whence come all the great 
whales’ remains and great sharks which are so abundant in this Suffolk deposit, 
aud which are absent in Norfolk? The answer to this question is—they come 
from a great deposit of an earlier age, like that found in Beloium known as the 
Diestien or Black Crag; and in this we have evidence of a warmer sea, of a more 
Miocene-like fauna than in any of our well-preserved Hast-Anglian crags—either 
Coralline, Red, or Norwich. Most perfect remains of more than twenty long- 
snouted whales, such as now live in tropical seas, of huge sharks 80 feet long, and 
of a great seal with huge tusks, are found in the Diestien beds freshly and sharply 
preserved. In our Suifolk bone-bed these same bones and remains occur much 
washed and waterworn. They have been washed out of Diestien beds, and are 
proofs to us of the former existence of Diestien straia in Suffolk. But besides 
these remains, we find in the Suffolk bone-beds certain sandstone nodules which 
the author has lately found strong reason to believe are bits of the old Diestien 
deposits indurated and waterworn. This sandstone is even found adhering to 
the sharks’ and whales’ teeth and bones, but never to the mastodons’, But 
besides that, the specimens exhibited show a great number of shells preserved 
in that sandstone. These shells are not the shells of the Red Crag, nor even of 
the oralline Crag, for they occur among the waterworn nodules quite below 
either of these deposits. It is true that all the constituents of the Suffolk bone- 
bed are sometimes dispersed in small numbers through the Red Crag, but this is 
what we must expect in the deposit of so destructive a sea. The most important 
* Since the above paper was read, I find that a species of shell, which I believed to be 
estuarine, is wot so, and therefore the statement about estuary-shells must be somewhat 
modified. I believe, however, that these shells will still be found by a careful search after 
them.—C. J. 
