256 Guppy— Tertiaries of Trinidad. 
V. On some Deposits or Late Tertiary AcE at Marura, on 
THE Hast Coast oF TRINIDAD. 
By R. J. Lecumere Guppy, Esq., Civil Service, Trinidad. 
@ dle [YX TRODUCTION.—In the Map appended to the ‘ Report 
on the Geology of Trinidad,’ * we find the principal Tertiary 
coal-bearing strata of the Island indicated by a more or less irre- 
gular band of dark colour, stretching from Chaguanas, Couva, and 
Savonetta, on the western or Parian coast, to Manzanilla on the 
eastern or Atlantic side. To the north of this band lies a sterile 
region of detrital matter, chiefly siliceous, marked in the map by 
yellow with red spots. I wish to draw attention more particularly 
to that part of this latter formation which lies on the eastern coast 
between the River Matura and Saline Bay. 
On approaching Matura from Valencia, after having crossed the 
Oropouche River, an evident change for the better is observable in 
the nature of the soil; for, instead of the intensely sterile quartzose 
sand and white clays which form the principal part of the ‘ stratified 
detritus,’ we find that a portion of calcareous matter has mingled 
with the earth, and rendered it a little more suitable for agriculture. 
This calcareous matter seems to have been derived from underlying 
beds,. which might probably be classified as belonging to the ‘upper 
part of the Newer Parian’ of the Government Geologists. These 
beds are in part composed of a dark-coloured and fine-grained cal- 
careous sandstone, containing an abundance of small shells. No great 
extent of these beds is exposed; but near the Rincon, a natural 
savanna bordering on Matura Bay, the erosion caused by a small 
stream, and the wasting action of the sea, have brought into view a 
fossiliferous bed, the organic remains from which may probably give 
us an insight into the question of its age, and may even lead to a 
knowledge of some of the physical phenomena which succeeded the 
deposition of the earlier Tertiaries of the Island. 
2. Organic Remains.—The fossils found by me in the beds 
alluded to amount to more than ninety species, and have relation- 
ships with the recent fauna, with the fauna of the ‘ Post-pliocene’ 
deposits of the Antilles (Barbados, &c.), and with that of other 
Tertiaries in this Island. As respects the two former cases, I have 
been able, for the most part, to compare specimens ; but in regard to 
the Newer Parian fossils, I have not been able to obtain such full 
information as is desirable. The indications furnished in the 
Appendix to the Geological Report} are very meagre; and, after a 
lengthened, but nevertheless somewhat unsatisfactory, examination 
of the Matura fossils, I have drawn up the following list. 
* Memoirs of the Geological Survey: Report on the Geology of Trinidad; or 
Part I. of the West Indian Survey; by G. P. Wall, from the Government School 
of Mines, Jermyn Street, and J. G. Sawkins, F.G.S. Svo. 1860. London: Longman 
and Co. 
{+ Report on the Geology of Trinidad pp. 161-166, 
