S. V. Wood—The Long Meadend Bed. 493 
period the land was deprived of vegetation till the Diluvial period, 
and still further to the north perhaps even still later, because neither 
Mammoth nor Rhinoceros were able to go over to the Scandinavian 
peninsula, where, as is generally known, remains of those Pachy- 
dermata do not occur. Shall we attribute this absence of vegetable 
and animal life to a great accumulation of ice in this part of the 
earth during the Tertiary period ? 
T1J.—On tur Lona Merapenpd Ben. 
By Searztes V. Woop, F.G.S. 
N the September Number of this MaGazrinz, Mr. H. Keeping 
impugns the accuracy of my father’s view as to the shell-bed 
at Meadend, which it seems has now disappeared; and says that it 
was a slipped mass from a bed which, by digging, he found in situ 
higher up the cliff slope, “ close under the gravel with all the Lower 
Headon Freshwater beds below it”; adding ‘‘that he wishes to be 
distinctly understood to maintain that it is the marine Middle 
Hleadon of the Geological Survey, and equivalent to the Middle 
Headon of Colwell bay, Headon hill, Whitecliff bay, and Brocken- 
hurst in the New Forest.” As I am the only survivor of those who 
in 1843 worked at this bed, and upon whose discoveries in it my 
father’s description of it was based, I wish to put on record the facts 
at that time, and vindicate my father’s accuracy. 
My father, in Charlesworth’s “ London Geological Journal” for 
September, 1846, describes two distinct and widely separated beds 
with marine shells; viz. (at p. 2 and 38) one about 10 or 12 feet 
- above high-water mark, close to the ravine about half a mile from 
the village of Milford, and another nearly a mile from this, which 
began at the edge of the beach about 300 yards west of Meadend, © 
and is the bed in question. 
From the first of these, which he termed the “ Upper Marine,” he 
gave a list of shells (with, in most instances, specific as well as 
generic names), ‘‘as the joint result of Mr. Edwards’s researches 
and his own.”! This list quite agrees, as far as it goes, with the 
list of Middle Headon shells given by Messrs. Keeping and Tawney 
in their paper in vol. xxxvii. of the Journal of the Geological Society, 
p- 115; and there is, I believe, no question raised by Mr. Keeping, 
or even Prof. Judd,” about the identity of this bed with the Middle 
Headon, the coincidence both in organic contents and stratigraphical 
position being in accordance with it. I did not work at this bed, 
but my father and Mr. Edwards only. 
1 To this list he, by a footnote at p. 117 of the continuation of his paper, adds 
two genera, viz. Cardium and Gastrochena. By a clerical error he refers in this 
note to p. 4, instead of p. 3, of the first part of his paper. 
2 I take Prof. Judd to indicate this bed in his ‘‘ New Forest” vertical section 
(Q. J. G. 8. vol. xxxvi. p. 170) by the thin marine band, which he connects by 
dotted lines with the Brackish-water beds of his parallel vertical ‘‘ West end of Isle 
of Wight’’ section; the Meadend bed not being indicated at all by him, but belong- 
ing to the upper portion of that division of his ‘‘ New Forest ’’ section which is 
marked ‘‘ Sands.” 
