Reports and Proceedings— Geological Society of London. 333: 
otherwise explained, no connection whatever exists between the 
drainage systems or the topography of the Cotteswolds and the 
Chilterns, nor does a vestige remain of the peneplain which, at some 
unknown height above the present surface, is supposed to have 
united them. The escarpments form two dip-slopes, to which the 
streams traversing them are respectively conformable. 
The more important rivers of Central England are longitudinal, 
following the strike of softer rocks along which the predominant 
erosion has taken place, the transverse drainage being everywhere 
subsidiary to that of the plains. The excavation of the latter may 
have taken place at a comparatively early period in a direction not 
vertical, but inclined more or less with the dip of the softer strata, 
the formation of the dip-slope and the cutting back of the opposing 
escarpment being contemporaneous; the erosion of valleys in the 
dip-slope must have been posterior to this, and could not have 
preceded it. 
III.—June 5th, 1907.—Sir Archibald Geikie, D.C.L., Sc.D., Sec.R.S., 
President, in the Chair. 
At the Ordinary Meeting on May 15th the President announced 
that the Council had resolved to award the proceeds of the Daniel 
Pidgeon Fund for 1907 to Miss Ida L. Slater, B.A. (Dublin), 
Newnham College, Cambridge, who proposes to investigate the Lower 
Paleozoic rocks in the neighbourhood of Llandeilo. 
The following communications were read :— 
1. ‘‘ A Marine Fauna in the Basement Beds of the Bristol Coalfield.” 
By Herbert Bolton, F.R.S.E., F.G.S. 
Isolated and rare fossils have been occasionally discovered in the- 
Bristol Coalfield, but the list of genera and species hitherto recorded 
is a short one. During the progress of an exploration branch at the. 
Ashton Vale Colliery, fossiliferous shales were traversed in the 
lowest Coal-measures resting upon the Millstone Grit. <A section of 
the Coal-measures in this part of the coalfield is given, the Gays. 
Seam being the lowest workable seam, and the chief fossiliferous 
shale is localized at a depth of 84 feet below it. The most striking 
‘feature of the fossils is their dwarfed condition, especially among 
the fish-remains. Fossils found in the spoil banks of other pits. 
indicate that other marine horizons occur in the coalfield. The 
thickness of the Millstone Grit appears to be about 980 feet. The 
paleontological description embodies a tabular list of fossils from 
the marine horizon, which shows a close correspondence with the 
list drawn up from the marine beds associated with the Gin Coal of 
North Staffordshire; but it does not appear to be desirable to 
conclude that the horizons are identical, until further evidence of 
faunal development has been obtained from the Bristol area. The 
Brachiopod fauna contains forms identical with, or closely approximating 
to, species occurring in the Cyathaxonia- and Dibunophyllum-zones. 
The paleontological description contains an account of the different 
