390 



Rev. R. Arlington Bullen- 



Although the Walsinghara Beds are best studied in the north- 

 east district they are not confined to it. Admiral's Cave at Spanish 

 Point is in this formation, for in it is to be found the extinct 

 endemic species of land mollusc, Pcecilo%onites Nelsoni (Bland), Pils., 

 which may be taken as the characteristic fossil of these beds. Major 

 Peile has added a fine series of this and other fossil and sub-fossil 

 Zonitidae to the British Museum, together with marine fossils from the 

 higher Devonshire Series of Bermuda. 



Much of the rock of this period, however, has no distinguishing- 

 fossil. The P. Nelsoni would only be found where the habitat had 

 been congenial to it. There were spots where it flourished under 

 favourable conditions of food-plant, shelter, and other advantages, 

 just as to-day in places such as the blown sands of Cornwall, Norfolk, 



Fig. 3. Diagram sketch of cliff, west shore of Castle Harbour, to show deposit 

 of land-shells. [No photograph was possible under the conditions of 

 distance and sunlight available.] Surface covered with jungle of Bermuda 

 juniper, sage, and ipecacuanha, festooned and overgrown with Cape 

 jessamine. Sea-water discharges through the beach below from hidden 

 caves draining Harrington Sound. The district is honeycombed with 

 caves. On the right is a large quarry of hard crystalline limestone 

 ( Walsingham formation) . 



Brittany, Mallorca, and Spain land mollusca are abundant in some 

 places, and for no readily ascertainable reason are absent under 

 what appear to be identical conditions in others. The abundance 

 of P. Nelsoni and its companion species, Bermudensis, Reinianus, 

 circumfirmatus, which outlasted it, points to an abundant rainfall far 

 greater than that which now obtains in these islands. 



On the west shore of Castle Harbour, on Mr. Peniston's land, there 

 occurs a cliff of hard Walsingham limestone, which contains scattered 

 through its mass abundant specimens of various Helicidae, and in 

 a small cave or pocket, about 16 feet above the shore and quite 

 unreachable without a ladder, a mass of the same shells is con- 

 glomerated together with a calcareous cement of stalagmitic character. 





