526 Correspondence—Professor John W. Judd. 
several beds. Mr. Keeping says that he suspected at the time that 
the ‘‘ Marine bed” was not in place, and that he spoke to both Dr. 
Wright and the Marchioness of Hastings on the subject. As both of 
these authors describe the bed in regular sequence, and enumerate 
a number of freshwater strata as lying unequivocally above it, is it 
not clear that they, after a careful examination of the question, 
regarded the objections of your correspondent as unfounded ? 
In 1881 Mr. Keeping stated that the Marine bed at Hordwell had 
not been seen for twenty-eight years. This statement, though not 
literally correct, may be taken as sufficient evidence that since the 
date when the Marchioness of Hastings’ description was written, 
your correspondent has had no opportunity of correcting or confirm- 
ing his early impressions. 
For thirty years and upwards, the statements of Mr. Searles 
Wood and Mr. Frederick Edwards, of Dr. Wright, and of the 
Marchioness of Hastings, that the Marine bed was overlaid by fresh- 
water strata, has remained unchallenged and uncontradicted, and has 
been quoted again and again. Now, when most of the original 
observers have passed away, your correspondent comes forward and 
would have us believe that they all committed a most egregious 
blunder, and this in spite of distinct warning on his part. 
Now for the accuracy of your correspondent’s recollections. He 
states that when described by Mr. Searles Wood, the marine bed 
was a patch “‘just above high-water mark, and only extending some 
20 yards in length.” Mr. Searles Wood, writing in 1846, with the 
section before him, says, “'The bed occurs at an elevation of ten or 
twelve feet above high-water mark, and only traceable for about 
forty yards.” But he also states that when the bed was first dis- 
covered by Mr. F. Edwards, it could be followed for three hundred 
yards, though it soon became so covered by debris from above, that 
three years after, when he himself first visited it, the bed could not 
be traced for a third of this distance. 
Am I wrong, under such circumstances, in appealing to geologists 
not to set aside as unworthy of credence the carefully recorded 
observations of very competent observers, in favour of the crude 
recollections of your correspondent ? 
The importance of this so-called ‘ marine-band,” which is only 
nine inches in thickness, has been much overrated. Jt is not a distinct 
formation, as your correspondent would have us believe, but only 
one of numerous local intercalations of brackish-water bands, among 
the Oligocene strata of this area. When Mr. Keeping undertakes 
in twenty minutes to convince me of the identity of this insignificant 
bed with certain strata, themselves very inconstant, on the opposite 
side of the Solent, he certainly overrates his powers of persuasion or 
my faculty of belief. 
Your correspondent is also mistaken in supposing that I am the 
authority for the statement that the coast at Hordwell is receding at 
the rate of a yard per annum. ‘The estimate of the rate of loss of 
this part of the coast was made by a very competent observer, Mr. 
Codrington (Q. J. G.S. vol. xxvi. p. 5382). Every one who knows 
