142 bulletin: museum of comparative zoology. 



Retreat consist of single pieces of a delicate branching, indeterminate 

 coral, a Conus, resembling C. solidulura Guppy,^ a Tellina, and large 

 Tubulu casts of a Teredo % 



The only fossils from these beds which I have been able to have 

 identified are the Foraminifera, of which Bagg has recognized the fol- 

 lowing species from Cinnamon Hill : Orbitoides dispansus, Sowerby ; 

 Orbitoides sp. undetermined ; Operculina complanata^ Defr. 



Of these species Bagg says that the first is Eocene, and the third 

 rare in the Cretaceous and abundant in the Eocene. He remarks that 

 Brady has said that the " Miocene " of Jamaica contains the latter 

 form. Inasmuch as we have shown that the " Miocene of Jamaica " 

 of previous writers meant anything from Eocene to recent, this de- 

 termination is of no value. Bagg adds that " This bed is Eocene." 



Careful collecting should be made from these beds, although the 

 material is of such a poor character that paleontologists to whom it 

 has been shown consider it too poor for determination. The fossils 

 and the material in which they occur are of comparatively deep water 

 character, — more shallow than the Montpelier, but deeper than the 

 Bowden. 



The position of these beds below the Bowden clearly indicates that 

 they antedate the latter in age, and for the present we can only say that 

 their affinities are with the Montpelier beds of Eocene age. 



The conditions of subsidence which made the deposition of the Mont- 

 pelier and Brownstown white limestones possible were undoubtedly 

 sufficiently great to drown the pre-existing littoral faunas of Jamaica ; 

 and this epoch ended the old insular life conditions of the earlier epochs 

 and separated it from that of the later and succeeding epochs, which 

 assumed a more cosmopolitan character. 



The fossils of this horizon practically embrace all the forms which 

 hitherto have been described by the English paleontologists, from the 

 "White Limestone," the "Yellow Limestone," the "Upper Miocene," 

 " Lower Miocene," " Miocene," and Bowden Beds, by Moore, Etheridge, 

 Duncan, Guppy, and perhaps others, and referred to the Miocene, Upper 

 Miocene, and Lower Pliocene age by those writers, and finally placed in 

 the Upper Oligocene by Dall. 



In resume we can now say that the hemera of the Orbitoidal fauna of 

 Jamaica is as follows : Orbitoides have been reported in the Hippurites 

 limestone of the parish of St. Thomas by Barrett, Woodward, Jones, and 

 Etheridge, and we have shown their occurrence in abundance in the 



1 Quart. Jour. Geol. Soc, Vol. XXII., PI. XVI. Fig. 1, 1866. 



