426 Correspondence — Mr. John E. Lee, 



Lastly, I found in the raised beach at Brighton, a little piece 

 which I think I showed to you, in comparison with a pebble of dark 

 red sandstone you had obtained from the same deposit, and I men- 

 tioned that the one was too light and the other too dark to be the 

 Gres de May, or Caradoc Hartshill, or Lickey Quartzite, or Sandstone. 



Instead of returning home from Brighton, I went on to Selsea, 

 and there on the shore I saw several large blocks of the same stone, 

 so this proves that they lay above the London Clay. 



This is quite different from the Chalk conglomerate which caps 

 some of our Chalk hills here, and is evidently still in process of forma- 

 tion, by the agglutinating power of the oxide of iron so abundant 

 above the Chalk. 



I have never been at Fontainebleau, but I should consider, from its 

 position above the Calcaire grossier, that the St. Germains stone is 

 the same ; but though I found the block of pudding-stone lying in 

 the quarry, I never could learn whether it formed a continuous bed, 

 though I asked Mens. Mortillet about it. The French querns are 

 formed from a pudding-stone with small flints, just like the English 

 querns, and are of the same size. 



The bit of stone inclosed is from one of the small blocks. The 

 smaller piece is from a Selsea block without fossils. 



24, Hyde Gardens, Eastbourne. T. Ogier Ward. 



PENTACBINUS PRISCUS, GOLDF., IN THE LOWER DEVONIAN, 

 MEADFOOT SANDS, NEAR TORQUAY, 



Sir, — A high authority in the geological world has said, with 

 respect to the Crinoidea, "It is perfectly useless to do anything 

 without the cups," and, probably, this ought to have deterred me 

 from sending you the inclosed rough sketch of a fossil which is 

 found, though somewhat rarely, in the Lower Devonian shales and 

 grits of Meadfoot Sands, near Torquay. The sketch is 

 magnified three diameters, and. though only known to us 

 hitherto in the shape of impressions, yet the characters 

 are so very well marked, notwithstanding imperfect speci- 

 mens hitherto found, that I am tempted to send you a 

 notice of its occurrence, as it has, I believe, been hitherto 

 undescribed from the English Devonian. It is apparently the 

 Fentacrinites priscus of Goldfuss, plate liii. fig. 1 ah, and the specific 

 characters he gives are very nearly the same as those of our specimens. 



Column subpentagonal ; joints either all of equal size, or alter- 

 nately larger and smaller. The joint faces rather hollow, with a 

 rosette of five oval leaves, rather pointed at the extremities (in the 

 impression this rosette slightly projects). The radiating lines some- 

 what large, but few in number ; those between the leaves meeting 

 each other in angles, three or four between each pair of leaves ; 

 those towards the ends of the leaves going direct to the circum- 

 ference of the joint. 



These fossils have been found hitherto almost exclusively in sandy 

 grit, not in limestone ; and in nearly every case in the same beds 

 with the Pleurodictyum problematicum. As they are only casts or 

 mpressions, it is difficult to say whether the joints alternate in size 



