Darbishire—Macclesfield Drift-beds. 297 
shells with more or less epidermis, or shells with the byssus of Myt:- 
lus still adhering, could deceive no competent collector, however 
carefully filled with sand. 
Mr. Plant, however, detailed a fraud of more elaborate character— 
namely, the imitation of Drift-fossils by means of a process of im- 
portation and manufacture. I will not say that such a forgery could 
not be executed, but I doubt whether any Macclesfield workman has 
done it. 
The fragments of shells which I present to-day with confidence 
as Drift-fossils from Macclesfield, not only represent with perfect 
fairness many pounds’ weight which have passed through my hands 
at Mr. Lowe’s, but with almost equal similarity like masses of the 
Moel Tryfaen remains. 
Further, as appears from the Table, they reproduce with remark- 
able correspondence the groups or lots of species which occur in 
Carnarvonshire and at Blackpool. 
Moreover, with even a yet more striking coincidence, these frag- 
ments from Macclesfield not only appear in almost identical propor- 
tions of frequency, but actually (as will be seen on comparing the 
specimens) continually repeat the conditions of fracture, wear, and 
preservation which characterise the Welsh and Lancashire speci- 
mens. 
Supposing that the Macclesfield navigators could conduct a delicate 
mechanical and chemical process to the minute point of exact imi- 
tation, it is out of the question that any one of them should know 
exactly what species to use, or how to break and wear them to the 
genuine Drift pattern, or to mix them in true Drift proportions. It 
is impossible that they could introduce certain Arctic shells now 
extinct, or certain Southern shells of extreme rarity in British seas. 
Now, though I picked out of Mr. Lowe’s heap four or five un- 
touched fragments of a foreign Venus, I have not in a single 
instance found a ‘driftized’ piece of any of several most common 
British beach-shells. There is, even amongst the spurious whole 
shells, a remarkable absence of such shells as Mya truncata, Solen, 
Tellina tenuis or fabula, Scrobicularia, Lutraria or Pecten varius. 
Those intruders which did occur are precisely such as might have 
been brought home from some cheap excursion, to be treasured 
or neglected as the case might be, until the novel demand gave them 
a new value. Thus a perforated pebble, with fresh Saxicave, Mac- 
tra stultorum (the commonest of Lancashire beach-shells), Tellina 
solidula, Venus striatula, Patella vulgata, Turritella communis, 
Natica monilifera, Buccinum undatum, and Fusus gracilis were all 
brought forward—for immediate detection. 
Lastly, the fragments of fossils are not sufficiently rare to make 
it easier to forge than find them. I have gathered a cubic inch in 
less than an hour several times ; and one cannot suppose a deception 
so thorough-going that fossils, the fruit of so great an ingenuity, 
should be actually scattered and buried for visitors to find. 
Upon the whole, I believe the accusation of the manufacture of 
Drift-fossils is altogether an invention. That it is so, one little 
