>S'. V. Wood— The Long Meadend Bed. 71 



" In the discussion upon the paper 'On the Section at Hordwell Cliff from the 

 top of the Lower Headon to the base of the Upper Bagshot Sands,' by the late Mr. 

 E. B. Tawney and myself, which was read before the Geological Society, June 28, 

 1883, Prof. Judd is reported to have said: That the paper seemed to be a critical 

 one, and the criticism was rather of the nature of a statement that the authors had 

 not seen what several distinguished observers such as Mr. F. E. Edwards, Mr. 

 Searles Wood, Dr. Wright, and others, stated they had distinctly seen. . . . Xow 

 I wish to assure Prof. Judd that my memory does not fail me, and that I have seen 

 the fossiliferous patch of stuff in question many hundreds of times Just in the same 

 position as Mr. S. Wood, Mr. Edwards, Dr. Wright, and the Marchioness of 

 Hastings had seen it, and I always believed it to be nothing more than a slipiped mass, 

 which 1 subsequently obtained complete proof that it was. 



"The patch in question when described by Mr. S. Wood was only to be found 

 close to the beach just above high-water mark, and only extending some 20 yards in 

 length, and 9 inches in thickness. ... I succeeded in finding the bed from which 

 the fossils had come, in situ, just ia the sequence as I had always expected to find it, 

 namely, close imder the gravel with all the Lower Headon Freshwater beds below it, 

 showing clearly that all the previous authors were wrong in putting these freshwater 

 beds above it. . . . The bed in dispute I wish to be distinctly understood to main- 

 tain is the Marine Middle Headon of the Geological Survey, and equivalent to the 

 Middle Seadon of Colwell Eay, Seadon Sill, Whitecliff Bay, and Brockenhurst in 

 the New Forest." 



Mr. Elwes writes in the November Number of this Magazine by 

 the request of Mr. Keeping to say, that he and a party under Mr. 

 Keeping's direction, had opened the bed on the west side of Paddy's 

 Gap (the ravine near Milford referred to by my father), and found it 

 in situ 13 feet above the shore, consisting of from 1 foot to 1^ of sand 

 and comminuted shells, estuarine and marine, immediately overlain 

 by whitish sand of similar thickness, beneath 26^ feet of gravel and 

 soil, and resting on light green clayey sand in which specimens of 

 Paludina and Unio were found ; adding that about a third of a mile 

 to the east, near Westover Lane-end, there is a slight upthrow show- 

 ing the Unio bed, and about 10 feet of the underlying green clays ; 

 and that it was under this that the previous writers had placed the 

 Middle Headon marine bed, instead of above it. 



Mr. Elwes was good enough to send me the rough section which 

 is given in fac simile in cut No. 2, in explanation of this; and I have 

 added cut No. 1 to show the section of the entire cliff, from this point 

 westwards to beyond Meadend, prepared from sections made by 

 myself nearly 40 years ago, and connected by description with the 

 vertical section given by Messrs. Keeping and Tawney in their paper 

 giving rise to the discussion ^ (but which was not published till after 

 both my article in the November, and letter in the December 

 Number, of this Magazine were in print) ; and I think that I need 

 not add anything to the above to make the whole case intelligible, 

 and show how utterly my father's statements have been misrepre- 

 sented, and how the excavation made has confirmed bis description 

 in eveiy particular, but carried the subject no further. The party 

 have found the marine bed overlying the Lower Freshwater, as he 

 did, in situ (and not as a slipped mass close to the beach, as Mr. 

 Keeping made out), and at a height above the shore, which they 

 estimate at 13 feet, instead of the 10 to 12 at which he estimated 

 it ; but as regards the Freshwater beds to the east of it, which 

 1 Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xxxix. p. 574. 



