418 REPORT— 1887. 



and angular. It greatly resembles the fossil fruit called Gardenia by Heer, 

 from Bovey, but I am more inclined to place it under the Iridacece. 



The rest of the Hamstead beds consist either of unfossiliferous 

 mottly clay, or of greeny bine and darker carbonaceous clays with innu- 

 merable partings of freshwater shells, such as Melania, Melanopsis, Paludlna, 

 Unio, Cijrena, with enormous quantities of Gypridce and fish scales. But 

 scarcely less numerous than the shell layers are layers of a black, shiny, 

 globose fruit, the size of a currant ; and of a small seed, sometimes 

 mingled with the fruits and sometimes in separate layers. The enormous 

 majority of these fruits are merely empty husks, wrinkled and flattened ; 

 but occasionally they will be perfectly round, and are seen, if broken whilst 

 quite fresh, to contain two sets, each of three angular cells, base to base, 

 containing one, or perhaps more, ovate, keeled, smooth, inequilateral seeds. 

 Exteriorly, the fruits when full are smooth, quite round, with a slight 

 scar of attachment, and in this condition they may be picked up in num- 

 bers, washed out on the shore. The husks were named Nymphcea Boris 

 by Heer, on the supposition that they were simple nut-like seeds, though 

 no other remains of Nymphcea had been found associated with them 

 either here or at Bovey — and the globular fruits were called Garpolithes 

 globulus, Heer, with the suggestion that they might perhaps be the fruit 

 of a palm (Q.J.G.S., 1862, p. 375). The most interesting thing about them 

 is the truly prodigious quantities in which they are scattered throughout 

 a thickness of not much less than 250 feet of sediment. The plant seems 

 to have survived, in undiminished numbers, the innumerable vicissitudes 

 which over and over again changed the quality of the sediment and the 

 assemblages of mollusca living in it. It only disappears when the water 

 had become entirely salt, if not altogether open sea. A proportion of the 

 drifted seeds, which also form continuous layers, appear to have been shed 

 from these fruits, but they are associated with a small furrowed and 

 shortly bearded seed, described as Cyperites Forbesi, Heer. 



This author has also identified some fragments of a dicotyledonous leaf 

 from near the base of the beds as Andromeda reticulata, Ett., and the ' Taxi- 

 tes' of Forbes as Sequoia Gouttsice, Heer, of Bovey. The cones associated 

 with the exceedingly delicate foliage of the latter were, however, com- 

 pressed and in fragments. If they are of the same species as the perfect 

 specimens obtained from Hordwell, with which they seem to agree in 

 every particular, they would be Athrotaxis and not Sequoia, the one being 

 an Australian shrubby conifer frequenting river banks, and the other the 

 well-known mammoth tree, or Wellimjtonia, of the Sierra Nevada in 

 California. 



This, except two Oharas and the Garpolithes Websteri, brings our list 

 of Hamstead plants to a close, but the so-called Bembridge marls beneath 

 are in reality part of what is an absolutely continuous formation, deposited 

 under approximately identical conditions. The outcrop of the beds along 

 the shore was described by Forbes in great detail, and he estimated their 

 total thickness at 75 feet, but as no other measurements are given, we 

 must locate our plants rather indefinitely. 



Near the top, not far beneath the ' black band,' or dividing line, the 

 fronds of a large fan-palm seem not uncommon. The radius of one 

 measured 2 feet 4 inches, and was even then imperfect ; the leaf was 

 pyritised and very thick. The leaf-stalk measured 2 inches across, was 

 smooth, angular at the back, and of such substance that a piece of it was 

 mistaken for a chelonian bone. It is evidently the Sabal ')najor of Heer. 



