336 JReporfs and Proceedings — Geological Society of London. 



The woody layer, 18 or 20 inches thick, can be traced for 400 yards 

 to extreme low-water mark ; it rests on blue clay, which is four feet 

 thick under the pebble-ridge, but thins to seaward. It contains 

 estuarine shells. Below it is a layer of rounded pebbles. Near the 

 mouth of the river patches of shelly sandstone rest on the clay, 

 resembling that seen near Croyde, on the north side of the bay. 



In 1874 a pebble beach sloped to the sea from the frontage of the 

 building land at Westward Ho ! The pebbles have now disappeared, 

 and a cliff of clay, 15 feet high, occupies the spot. Near the Ladies' 

 Baths this clay rests on rock of Carboniferous age, but nearer the 

 Burrows, to the northward, a layer of sand intervenes, and, being 

 easily washed away, facilitates the removal of the clay. To the 

 north and east the clay thickens and is mixed with pebbles, many 

 of which are broken. This may be due to glacial action, but no 

 scattered stones have been observed. So long ago as 1600 — 1630 

 records of encroachments exist. A book published between 1600 

 and 1630 mentions the fact of a cairn having been washed away, 

 but gives no precise indication of its situation. 



5. " On Further Discoveries of Footprints of Vertebrate Animals 

 in the Lower New Ked of Penrith." By George Varty Smith, Esq., 

 F.G.S. 



Impressions of footprints were noticed by Prof. Harkness and 

 Mr. Binney on the flaggy beds of the New Eed Sandstone of Pen- 

 rith, bnt they were of a somewhat indistinct character and compared 

 unfavourably with those previously found at Brownrigg, in Plump ton. 

 The author therefore gave a description of some which have been 

 recently found in a quarry situate to the north of the Alston road, 

 about three miles and a half east of Penrith. The rock consists of 

 strongly false-bedded sandstone underlying the Magnesian Limestone. 

 Eleven footprints were found in the above quarry. Six of the 

 impressions were discovered in situ; three of them (all different) 

 were found on one stone near the top of the quarry ; another was 

 taken from a bed seven feet below that from which the three impres- 

 sions were taken, and the last two were taken from a bed one foot 

 and a half lower. The remainder were either found by the work- 

 men while quarrying, and set aside, or else discovered by the author 

 and his brother on the newly quarried stones. 



The surface of the two last-mentioned beds was in several places 

 covered with footmarks, which in nearly every case took the same 

 direction, namely, from west to east. 



It has been suggested, from the difference in size and depth of 

 some of the impressions, as comp^ired with the length of pace and 

 form of others, that they represent the impressions of several dif- 

 ferent species, if not of different genera of extinct Vertebrates. 



The author also found in a quarry of the Penrith sandstone in 

 Whinfell Wood, about three miles to the south-east of Penrith, a 

 cast of some footprints less distinct than those previously found, and 

 in an adjoining quarry a stone with several impressions of an en- 

 tirely different character. 



