570 Reports and Proceedings — 



to Melton (notice whereof has been already communicated to the 

 Geological Society), that section has not been any further exposed. 

 Meanwhile the London and North-Western Eailway Company are 

 rendering geological science a service by showing a similar but more 

 complete succession of Ehsetics in a cutting close to Barnston, on 

 their new Bingham branch. Here the uppermost Keuper marls, 

 with their gypsum bands, are succeeded as usual by the hard light 

 blue marls (? lower Ehgetic), 12 feet exposed. Above these oome 

 the ' Avicula-contorta ' shales, consisting below of about 13 feet 

 of 'paper shales,' with their variable yellow sandstones in their 

 upper portion, and a 2-inch bone-bed replete with the usual fish 

 remains, etc., 1 ft. 6 in. from their base, and graduating up into a 

 series of more earthy and thickly laminated dark blue shales, esti- 

 mated thickness 18 to 19 feet. Odd limestone nodules occur about 

 the middle of thoir last series, and at from 2 to 3 feet from the top 

 similar nodules set in, becoming rather more plentiful upwards, and 

 in the highest 6 inches, forming an incomplete layer. These Eh^tics 

 are capped by alternating thin- bedded blue limestones and brown 

 clays (Lower Lias), 10 feet exposed ; the lowest limestone of which, 

 at the base a thin-bedded, compact, or concretionary bed from 3 to 

 7 inches thick, contains Modiola minima and Myacites unionides. 

 These beds appear to be the equivalents of the ' Firestones ' and 

 * Guineas ' of Warwickshire, and of similar beds lately noticed by 

 Mr. Harrison near Leicester, and to indicate the absence of the 

 ' White Lias ' at this point. The dip of all the above beds is the 

 same, viz. 2° to 3° a little north of S.E. (the direction of the line), and 

 there is no evidence of unconformity. The succession is apparently 

 the same at Barnston as on the Nottingham and Grantham line at 

 Elton, 3J miles north-east, between which places and beyond to 

 Orston the Avicula-contorta shales form a low but very clearly 

 defined escarpment along their outcrop. 



2. "Note on the Eed Crag." By W. Whitaker, Esq., B.A., 

 F.G.S. 



The object of this paper is to show that what had been taken to 

 be an irregular line of erosion between a certain unfossiliferous sand 

 and the shelly Eed Crag (in Suffolk) was really a line of dissolution 

 of shells, the sand being simply Eed Crag deprived of its fossils 

 through percolation of water. This is shown to be the case from 

 the facts that in some places lines of bedding and false-bedding ex- 

 tend from the Crag into the sand, and that impressions of Crag-shells 

 are found in ironstone in the sand. 



3. " On the Kessingland Cliff section, and the relation of the 

 Forest-bed to the Chillesford Clay, with some remarks on the so- 

 called terrestrial surface at the base of the Norwich Crag." By F. 

 W. Harmer, Esq., F.G.S. 



This paper was a reply to one read before the Society during last 

 session by Mr. J. Gunn, F.G.S., who affirmed that the Forest-beds 

 in the section were overlain by the Norwich Crag and Chillesford 

 Clay. The author, on the contraiy, gave, in the first part of the 

 paper, detailed drawings of the cliff, in which he represented the 



