S. V. Wood—The Long Meadend Bed. 495 
was one of the commonest shells in the bed. My father has pre- 
served eleven specimens of it, of various sizes, which are in my 
possession, and to which the locality ‘‘Meadend” is attached in his 
handwriting. These are easily distinguishable from the Barton 
specimens by the sand with which some are filled, and by a rough 
exterior, unlike the smooth, almost polished, exterior of the Barton 
specimens. Now this species so common in the Meadend bed, and 
at Barton, and also given by Deshayes from several localities in the 
‘<Sables Moyens,” the recognized French equivalent of the Barton 
beds, is not only absent from the Middle Headon list of Messrs. 
Keeping and Tawney, but does not, so far as I can trace, occur any 
higher than the bed in question either in England or the continent ; 
but occurring thus abundantly in this bed, it serves to confirm the 
position which my father assigned to it, viz. an estuarine transition 
from the Barton marine, to the Lower Freshwater (or Lower Headon) 
formation. Belonging thus to the top of the Upper Bagshot its im- 
portance becomes apparent, for it constitutes the transition bed from 
the Upper Eocene to the Lower Oligocene, though when my father 
described it the Barton clay and London clay were regarded as 
identical by geologists, the first of the papers in which the Hocene 
succession was worked out by Mr. Prestwich having appeared after 
the first part of my father’s description was published. 
So much for the Paleontological evidence, and now for the Strati- 
graphical. 
The Lower Freshwater, partaking of the uniformly gentle eastern 
dip of all the beds in the cliff on the Hampshire side of the Solent 
in this part, extends from this Meadend or “ Lower Marine” bed of 
my father, to his ‘‘ Upper Marine,” which was nearly a mile east 
of it, and near to Milford; and (with the Newer Pliocene gravel 
capping everything unconformably) has exclusive possession of this 
length of cliff, as far east as the part where the Middle Headon, or 
‘“‘Upper Marine” of my father, comes in by virtue of this dip, and 
which, though concealed by talus both in 1848 and 1845, must begin 
below the gravel some way to the west of the ravine where my father 
found it, and worked at it, low down in the cliff (10 to 12 feet above 
high-water mark), but still very far to the east of the Meadend bed, and 
separated from it by a series of freshwater sands, marls, and clays 
(the Lower Headon), which constitute the cliff in this part below 
the unconformable gravel cap and above the talus thus concealing its 
base. It was at a point about the central part of this long stretch of 
cliff both horizontally and vertically, that the collection of Mam- 
malian, Reptilian, and Fish-remains was obtained by my father and 
self, with our unaided hands, during six weeks of the summer of 
1848, and a similar period in 1845, which were partly figured in the 
London Geological Journal of 1846, and soon afterwards presented 
to the British Museum. The whole of these, with the exceptions 
mentioned in the foot-note,t were obtained from one place, not more 
1 Prof. Judd having in his vertical section (Q.J.G.S. vol. xxxvi. p. 170), represent- 
ing his view of the beds on the Hampshire side of the Solent, marked one horizon as 
that from which the Reptilian, and another as that from which the Mammalian 
