366 | Reports and Proceedings. 
Perhaps the most remarkable result attending those excavations — 
has been the discovery of a large quantity of marine shells. In 
other parts of the country these have been frequently met with, but 
probably there are few places where they abound so much as in this 
vicinity. They are to be traced round the town and on the hills to 
an elevation of 1,200 feet. In the Cemetery-ground they make 
their first appearance about 10 or 12 feet below the surface, 
and for about 50 feet there is scarcely a bed of sand or gravel free 
from these exuvie. Those that are found in clean sand or gravel 
are almost perfectly white, while others in clay partake of its colour. 
In the collection of shells brought here for your examination, about 
half the species were found in a fragmentary condition, and of these 
fragments some pounds were collected, but the great majority 
were too much defaced to be identified. Turritella and Cardium 
were the most plentiful ; but very few indeed of these, in comparison 
with the number of their fracments, are perfect. The above, and 
Patella, Purpura, Mangelia, Pecten, Fusus Bamfius, Ostrea, and 
Tellina, were the first met with, at abcut 3 yards below the 
surface, embedded in fine stratified sand or gravel. At about 10 
feet lower down, nearly thirty varieties were found in an almost per- 
pendicular bed of fine and even running gravel. This bed proved 
to be 10 or 12 yards in depth, about 14 in breadth, and 4 
or 5 in thickness. More perfect specimens were taken out here 
than at any other part of the ground; especially Murex, Nassa, 
Purpura, Litorina, Dentalium, Venus, Mactra, Natica, Trochus, 
Lurritella, Aporrhais, and Cardium. The floor of this bed was a 
thick stratum of rather wet sand. At this point the shell-deposit 
appeared to terminate ; and it was the lowest level reached by the 
labourers above the drainage-operations before mentioned. On the 
same horizon as above, at a short distance eastward, in a small bed 
of fine-running gravel, four or five Cypree europee were found 
in a perfect condition ; likewise Cytherea Chione and Cyprina 
islandica, both fragmentary, and a large Buccinum undatum in very 
good condition. But some of the larger shells are indebted for their 
preservation to their being embedded in a more clayey medium. 
Each separate cutting presented more or less a change in sorts; but 
the most fragmentary and universally distributed proved to be 
Turritella, Cardium, Tellina, Mactra, Buecinum, Mya, and Cyprina. 
In a thin bed of fine sand, upon an upper level, there were found 
some very minute shells in a wonderful state of preservation, viz., 
young of Turritella, Nassa, Mangelia, &e. ‘These beds of fine sand 
and gravel were the most prolific. 
Not much less striking than the discovery of those shells is the 
circumstance of the extraordinary quantity and variety of rock- 
specimens, &c., which have been associated with them. The Boul- 
der-clay of this neighbourhood contains, I believe, upon the whole, 
about the usual number of igneous rocks which are found in it 
elsewhere; although at the southern extremity of this town, 
there are some very fine beds of it entirely free from pebbles 
and everything else, except pieces of drift-wood and fragments of 
