330 Correspondence — C. Dacies Sherhorn. 



supposed recent Voles of the Forest Bed I have come to consider as 

 extinct species ; the Pliocene Crag types, on the other hand, while 

 entirely absent from the West llunton Fresh- water Bed, were found in 

 the East Runton Forest Bed mixed with types of the former; this 

 leads to the assumption that the Crag types have been washed into 

 the East Bunton deposit. The latter explanation, which I did not 

 explicitly formulate at the time, receives strong support from the 

 fact that at East Bunton we find likewise a West Bunton species 

 of Beaver, together Avith a Pliocene species [Castor plicidens, Maj.), 

 the inference to be drawn being that the provenance of the latter is 

 the same as that of the Pliocene Yoles, mingled at East Bunton with 

 the West Bunton types. 



If I am right in my deductions, it follows that the Vole fauna of 

 the Forest Bed will, by the elimination of recent as well as of 

 Pliocene types, prove to have been much more homogeneous than 

 hitherto supposed. This being the case with one restricted group, it 

 appears to call for a revision of all the other mammalian remains. 



For many years I have entertained the suspicion that there must be 

 something wrong with our lists of the Forest Bed Mammals. In 

 plain language, the association of recent with Pliocene mammalian 

 species, culminating in the assumption of the musk-ox having been 

 a contemporary of the prototypes of the Upper Pliocene Val d'Arno 

 fauna, is a fauuistic impossibility. I therefore deny such an 

 association of which there is no analog}- in any other part of the 

 world, although this has been assumed on erroneous determinations, 

 e.g. with regard to the mammalian fauna of Leffe (Upper Lombardy). 



I verj' much doubt whether in the end a single one of the supposed 

 24 recent species, out of a total of 45 Forest Bed Mammals, will 

 remain, though in some cases it is not possible, for the present, to 

 detect differences between a fragmentary fossil and the corresponding 

 living species. C. I. Forsyth Major. 



AX ORTHIS FEOM LADOCK QUARRY, CORNWALL. 



SiE, — In the Memoirs of the Geological Survey, England and 

 Wales, Explanation of Sheet 346, 1906, p. .35,^ the following 

 paragraph occurs: — "A fossil has been found in the Ladock Quarry 

 and placed in the Truro Museum. It is an Orthis, which Dr. Ivor 

 Thomas, who examined it, thinks is probably new." The occurrence 

 of a fossil in this quarry was so interesting and unlooked for tliat it 

 seemed impossible to accept it without further evidence. Opportunity 

 for investigation did not occur until April last, Avhen I spent ten days 

 with Mr. Upfield Green working over liis promised section of the 

 country between JS^ewquay and Porthluney. The fossil in question 

 was found by Bennett, a stonebreaker, on a pile of stones midway 

 between Ladock and Grampound Boad, and 7iot i)i the quarry at all. 

 He told me himself that his son broke the stone, and he noticed this 

 fossil with the remains of several other impressions of shells. He pre- 

 served only this one specimen, which was an internal cast, and gave it 

 to Mr. Minard, of Grampound, who afterwards deposited it in the Truro 



