732 
tum, in ascending order, consists of very fine comminuted peat, with: 
small fragments ‘of hazel and oak twigs, the whole bearing the ap- 
pearance of a drifted mass. The highest bed, immediately under 
the vegetable soil, is composed of sandy clay, and is about seven 
inches thick. 
In some spots the lower vegetable deposit rests on a deeply 
orange-eoloured, ferruginous clay, and where this has been re- 
moved, the action of water on the drift, Mr. Ick says, is very ap- 
parent, the larger pebbles standing in high relief exactly in the 
same manner as in the bottom of the present river, where a rapid 
current flows over the gravel. 
Mr. Ick has traced this peaty deposit in places along the banks 
of the river towards Birmingham, through Deritend, particularly at 
Vaughton’s Hole, where it is eighteen inches thick. It has also been 
penetrated i in making wells and culverts in the lower part of Dig- 
beth, and nuts and bones have been found there. 
The next communication read is entitled “ A Postscript to the 
Memoir on the occurrence of the Bristol Bone- Bed in the neigh- 
bourhood of Tewkesbury,” by Hugh Edwin Strickland, Esq., F.G.S. 
Since the reading of the former communication (ante, p. 583), 
Mr, Strickland has ascertained that the bone-bed occurs at least 
ten miles further north, or at Defford Common, in Worcestershire, 
making a total range of 104 miles. At this locality are some old 
salt- works belonging to the Earl of Coventry, and the shaft, which 
was sunk about seventy years ago to the depth of 175 feet, was 
emptied a few months since of the brine with which it is wont to 
overflow. At the bottom of the shaft, which descends through the 
lias into the grey marl of the triassic series, but without reaching the 
red marl, is a tunnel that follows the dip of the strata for about 
160. yards. The shaft, Mr. Strickland says, consequently intersects 
the horizon of ‘the bone-bed,” and amoung the rubbish thrown out, 
he found considerable quantities of the peculiar white sandstone 
with bivalves ( Posidonomya), shown in his former paper to repre- 
sent in Worcestershire the bone-bed of Aust and Axmouth; but he 
also found specimens of the sandstone charged with the same 
description of teeth, scales and coprolites so abundant at Coomb 
Hill and the localities just mentioned. 
The occurrence of an abundance of pure salt water * within the 
area of lias, Mr. Strickland says, is an interesting phenomenon, and 
for a solution of it, he refers to Mr. Murchison’s Account of the 
cree of Cheltenham, p. 30. 
A paper on the high Temperature of Wells in the neighbourhood 
of Delhi, by the Rev. Robert Everest, F.G.S., was then read. 
* An imperial gallon of the brine is stated to yield the following saline 
contents :—Chloride of sodium .......... 5807°6 grains. 
NUlppabe or NMer tea. aes 195°S grains. 
Mab TEST. Wie i) ecole «sic es ee A trace. 
Dr ITastings’s Paper in the Analyst, vol. i. p. 384. 
