42 Reports and Proceedings— 



are typically represented. This section shows in ascending order : — 

 1. Pebble-bed of the Trias; 2. shattered rock; 3. compacted red 

 sand and rubble (ground moraine) ; 4. lowest bed of Boulder-clay 

 (largely composed of red sand) ; 5. stratified sand, with shell- 

 fragments ; 6, bed of fine unctuous clay ; 7. brick-clay (with many 

 shells and striated boulders) ; 8. sand-bed; 9. stratified yellow sand 

 ("washed-drift sand"). 



The author next gave a list of the localities in which shells were 

 found, and stated that in all forty-six species had been met with 

 distributed through the clay-beds, — those found in the sand-seams 

 being rare, — and generally fragmentary and rolled. The shells most 

 commonly found entire are usually of small size, and of a form cal- 

 culated to resist pressure, — such as Turriiella communis, Trophon 

 clatliratus, and Mangelia turricula. Fusus antiquus and Buccinum 

 undatum are generally represented only by worn fragments of the 

 columella, and Cyprina Islandica is always found in fragments. 

 The author thought that the association of the various species dis- 

 tributed without order through the clays shows that they could not 

 have lived together on the same bottom, but that they must have 

 been to a great extent transported. He contended that the ad- 

 mixture of shells in the Boulder-clay was due to the tendency of the 

 sea to throw up its contents on the beach, whence changing currents 

 and floating ice might again remove them, and to the oscillations 

 of the land bringing all the beds at one time or another within 

 reach of marine erosive action. He maintained that it is in the 

 distribution of land and sea at the period of deposition of the 

 Lancashire deposits, and not in astronomical causes, that we must 

 seek the exj)lanation of the climate of that period, the conditions of 

 which he endeavoured to explain by a consideration of the propor- 

 tions of the species and the natural habitats of the shells found in 

 the drifts. 



3. " Notes on a Deposit of Middle Pleistocene Gravel near Ley- 

 land, Lancashire." By E. D. Darbishire, Esq., F.G.S. 



The bed of gravel, about 40 feet thick, and about 240 feet above 

 the level of the sea, is covered by yellow brick clay, and overlies an 

 untried bed of fine sea-sand. The shells and fragments occur chiefly 

 at the base of the gravel. 



The most noticeable shells in the list of forty-two species, collected 

 by Miss M. H. Farington, are Panopcea Norvegica, Mactra glauca, 

 Gytherea cMone, Cardium rusticum, Fusus propinquus and Fusus antiquus, 

 var. contrarius. One specimen of Fusus craticulatus occurred. 



The group is by no means characteristically Arctic or Glacial. It 

 represents most nearly the Wexford lists, especially in presenting 

 the reversed Fusus, and may be considered as connecting those beds 

 with the Macclesfield drifts, also containing a Celtic assortment, with 

 Cytherea chione and Cardium rusticum. 



The author considered the Leyland deposit, like those on the west 

 of the Derbyshire hills, to be more probably littoral and truly climatic 

 than that of the Liverpool clays, the subject of Mr. Eeade's papex-, 

 and hazarded the conjecture that the latter were sea-bottom beds, 



