554 Notices of Memoirs — A. W. Gihh — Chalk in Aberdeenshire. 



IV.— On the Fossil Plants of the UrPER Culm Measures 

 OF Devon. By E. A. Newell Akbee, M.A., F.L.S., F.G.S.' 



r|)HE Upper Culm Measures form by far the largest portion of the 

 1 Carboniferous sequence in Devon and the adjacent counties. 

 Fossil plant remains are abundant in these beds, but their preservation 

 is rarely sufficiently good to permit of even generic determination. 

 A number of well-preserved specimens have, however, recently been 

 obtained from the one horizon in which coal or ' culm ' occurs in 

 these beds in the Bideford district. They include Calamites nndulatus, 

 Calamocladus charceformis, Alethopteris loncliitica, A. Serli, Neiiropteris 

 obliqua, Sigillaria tessellata, and many otiiers. Neuropteris Schlehani 

 and Megalopteris (?) sp. are also recorded from Britain for the 

 first time. 



This flora confirms the previous conclusions with regard to the 

 Upper Carboniferous age of these beds, and indicates tliat the coal- 

 bearing beds of the Bidefonl district are the equivalents of the 

 Middle Coal-measures elsewhere in Britain — a higher horizon than 

 has previously been assigned to these beds. 



V. — On the Occurrence of Pebbles of White Chalk in 

 Aberdeenshire Clay. By A. W. Gibb, F.G.S.' 



ri1HE record of the Cretaceous period in the north-east of Scotland 

 X is a very fragmentary one. The principal traces hitherto 

 noted consist of a deposit of the nature of a Greensand — not proved 

 to be in siUl — at Moreseat, Cruden, and large numbers of flints 

 scattered over the surface of the ground in the same locality between 

 Buchanness and the Hill of Dudwick. 



Further indications of Cretaceous strata have recently been 

 found at Strabathie, in the district of Belhelvie — about five miles 

 north of Aberdeen — in a bed of laminated clay close to the sea. 

 The clay is found to contain pebbles of white chalk in considerable 

 abundance. Some of the pebbles measure nearly a foot in length, 

 but the majority are small. Some of them inclose flints. That 

 they have been worn oft" an adjoining land surface is shown by the 

 fact that numbers of them are markedly glaciated, and that pebbles 

 of other rocks, identical with or similar to the rocks of the district, 

 are found in the same pit. These facts indicate that Upper 

 Cretaceous beds have once been, and perhaps somewhere are still, 

 in silii in the locality. 



It has been ascertained by boring that the clay deposit covers 

 a considerable area, and as fresh exposures are constantly being 

 made in the process of working the bed further finds may be 

 anticipated. 



^ Abstract of pajjer read before the British Association, Cambridge, Section C 

 (Geology), August, 1904. 



