338 EEPORT— 1888. 



■wherein we could not in any case Lave expected to find many shells, while 

 here the conditions have been so unfavourable for their preservation that 

 even such strong shells as Littorina are only imperfectly preserved and 

 crumble with a touch. Similarly with the land-shells, our collecting' 

 ground has been what at one time was a range of barren shifting sand- 

 hills whereon the fauna was probably always very limited ; and for the 

 preservation of the specimens we possess we are indebted to the clayey 

 matrix of one particular seam not much over an inch thick. So with 

 the mammalia. We have not reached their dens or haunts, but have 

 chiefly to rely for our specimens on the bones sporadically scattered 

 along a sea-beach ; and under these circumstances it is not surprising 

 that we have not been able to identify the carnivor whose teeth-marks 

 we have found on some of the bones, nor to specifically determine some 

 of the other animals. Indeed it is remarkable enough that under such 

 conditions we have found so much ; and we are inclined to think that the 

 presence at that period of a river in the Main Wold valley, which opens 

 to the sea at Bridlington Quay, may have caused slightly estuarine condi- 

 tions to prevail over this part of the old bay, and so have brought about 

 the comparative abundance of animal remains in the beach and the 

 presence of the hippopotamus. 



Relation to other Deposits. — These CliflF-beds cannot safely be correlated 

 with any other deposit known in Yorkshire. Their nearest analogue is the 

 estuarine shell-bed at Speeton mentioned in an earlier part of this report ; 

 but, as was before pointed out, the difi'erence of level between them is so 

 considerable that it is unlikely they have been exactly contemporaneous. 



In several other places on Plamborough Head the coast section reveals 

 steep bluffs of chalk below the drifts, but in no case except this have any 

 fossiliferous deposits been found in connection with them, and they seem 

 in most cases not to be sea-cliffs, but steep valley walls. At Flamborough 

 South Landing under one of these bluffs there is an accumulation of 

 rough pebbles somewhat resembling a beach, but it differs from the 

 Scwerby beach in the presence of a multitude of foreign stones and in 

 the absence of P/ioZas-bored pebbles or fossils of any kind. 



Your Committee ask to be re-appointed for the purpose of completing 

 the repair and determination of the fossils already obtained, but do not 

 propose at present to ask for a renewal of the grant. 



Report of the Committee, co?^s^si^n(7 0/ Professor Lankester, Professor 

 MiLNES Marshall, Mr. Sedgwick, and Mr. Gr. H. Fowler (>S'ec- 

 retary), appointed for the purpose of investigating the Develop- 

 ment of the Oviduct and connected structures in certain 

 fresh-water Teleostei. 



With regard to the grant made, I regret to say that I' have been unable 

 to make use of it. For various reasons the perch was selected as the 

 most suitable subject for investigation, and arrangements were made 

 with Mr. Armistead, of the Solway Fisheries, for supplies of ova and 

 fry. These, however, unfortunately, altogether broke down, and that 

 at a time when the spawning season was just over, and when, conse- 

 quently, no further attempts could be made till the ensuing spring. The 



