A. J. Jukes-Broiune — Boring at Marston, Bevizes}. 447 



many pieces of shell, and many fragments of dark-grey, compact, fine- 

 grained siliceous grit, one of which was 7 mm. across ; there were 

 also a few black grains which may be glauconite. 



The next sample from between 167 and 180 feet is also a very 

 sandy claj^ but the sand grains are less unequal in size. It also 

 contained several small fragments of the same dark siliceous rock, but 

 these have probably come from above and have been forced into the 

 sample by the boring tool. 



At 207 feet there is stiff but still somewhat sandy clay. At 

 219 feet they struck a spring of water which rose to within 12 feet 

 of the surface, but there was no bed of rock, and the sample sent from 

 that depth is an ordinary clay Avith some shell-fragments, but less 

 sandy matter than in that from 207 feet. The water must have been 

 flowing down an open crack of some kind, possibly the plane of 

 a fault, but it was easily shut out and the boring was continued. 

 A sample from 220 feet was a fine rather sandy clay with many thin 

 friable fragments of nacreoiis Ammonite shells. 



A sample from 248 feet is a fine clean clay with little sand and of 

 a dark-grey colour; 20 feet lower, at 268 feet, the sample shows 

 a mixture of two different clays, one clean and dark grey, the other 

 a light-grey finely granular marl or calcareous clay. The material was 

 stated to be very soft and to be of the same consistency for a thickness 

 of 2i feet, but there must have been two distinct beds, or at any 

 rate a band of marl. When a piece of the latter was washed, it 

 would not wholly break down and very little mud could be washed 

 out of it, the residue consisting of hard angular fragments of marl 

 with a few black grains and minute scales of mica; there were no 

 quartz-grains and no Foraminifera, but a few fragments of shell. 

 A sample from a little lower down (272 feet) is a stiff dark-grey clay 

 full of pieces of crushed Ammonite shells. 



The sample from 300 feet is specially interesting, because it 

 contains several specimens of an Aporrhais or Harpagodes, one of 

 which is fairly perfect though flattened out. It has been examined 

 by Mr. R. B. Newton, of the British Museum, who told me that it 

 closely resembled the Ap. mtermedius [_sic] of Piette from the Upper 

 Kimeridgian or Virgulian of the Haute Marne.^ Having also myself 

 compared the specimen with Piette's figures, I think there can be no 

 doubt that the fossil is Ap. intermedia, for not only is it of about the 

 same size and carries four keels which are prolonged into digitations 

 of the expanded wing, but the first whorl of the spire has the same 

 shell-structure of vertical ribs crossed by raised spiral striae, so that 

 it cannot be the young of Ilarpagodes oceani, though it appears to 

 belong to the genus Ilarpagodes rather than to Aporrhais. This 

 species has not previously been recorded from England, and is 

 important stratigraphically because it is only known in the Virgulian, 

 and consequently it indicates that the boring at 300 feet is still in 

 the Virgulian or upper division of the stage. 



At 304 feet a sample showed fine sandy clay with many fragments 

 of crushed bivalve shells, among Avhich I recognize a piece of 



' Mem. Soc. Linn. Normandic, vol. xvi, p. 140, pi. ix, figs. 15-17, 1872. 



