51 



species 



i6 





13 





30 





34 





25 





17 





26 





47 





116 JOURNAI, OF CONCHOLOGY, VOL. I5, NO. 4, OCTOBER, I916. 



Coralline Crag . - . 



St. Erth - - - - 



Box-Stones 



Diestian - - - - 



Anversian 



Messinian 



Bolderian 



Redonian (Tortonian) 



Vindobonian (Helvetian-Tortonian) 



The so-called Older Pliocene beds of Mr. Reid's Memoir are char- 

 acterised by shells with a southern facies indicating warmer climatic 

 conditions than prevailed in the Red Crag period, when boreal and 

 Arctic species were largely predominant. The East Anglian Box- 

 Stone deposits have been regarded by Mr. Harmer^ as the probable 

 equivalent in time of the Waenrode Beds of Belgium which Van den 

 Broeck^ has considered to be of Bolderian age and therefore Miocene. 

 In this connection it is interesting to note that the Box-Stone beds 

 have been quite recently regarded as Miocene by Mr. Reid.' 



Sir Ray Lankester^ determined some Proboscidean remains from 

 those beds as a new species of Mastodon, although subsequently 

 recognising them as a variety of M. angustidens of Cuvier,^ being 

 further of opinion that they were of older age than the Uiestian of 

 Belgium. It is well known that Cuvier's species characterises the 

 older Vindobonian beds of France, and is frequently found in the 

 ossiferous deposits of Sansan. When the Box-Stone mollusca are 

 more studied, such an age as is here indicated will probably be more 

 conclusively proved ; in the meantime the evidence is in favour of 

 those deposits being older than the Lenham Sandstones. The St. 

 Erth deposits of Cornwall were originally described by Searles Wood^ 

 as of Red Crag age, although he observed that "the character of the 

 mollusca, as a whole, is essentially southern, no peculiarly Arctic 

 shell having as yet occurred." 



Tiie fauna was more particularly described by Prof. Kendall and 

 R. G. BelF in the following year and again referred to as contempo- 

 rary with that of the Red Crag, a result contrary to the views of Mr. 

 Reid who claimed a greater age. Since that discussion Mr. Alfred 

 Bell* has published a paper on the St. Erth mollusca and regarded 



1 Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, icjoo, vol. 56, p. 708. 



2 Ann. Soc. R. Mai. Belgigue, 1884, vol. 19, pp. Ivi.-lxvi. 



3 Mededeel. Rijks. Del/st., 1915, no. 6, p. 9. 



4 Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, 1870, vol. 26, pp. 507-509. 



5 Geol Ma^, 1899, p 292. 



6 Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc , 1885, vol. 41, pp. 65-73. 



7 Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, 1.886, vol. 42, pp. 20T-214. 



8 Trans. R. Geol. Soc Cornwall, 1898, vol. 12, p. 133. 



